


Le Roi Au Bois Revant

by jacksqueen16, TC (thecollective)



Category: Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms, Merlin (TV)
Genre: After Camlann Merlin Big Bang, Arthur Awakens, Big Bang Challenge, Immortal Merlin, M/M, Merlin Big Bang Challenge, POV Arthur, POV Merlin, Sleeping Beauty - Freeform, Stream of Consciousness, dream fic, fairy tale, fairy tale fusion, modern merlin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 16:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2235570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacksqueen16/pseuds/jacksqueen16, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecollective/pseuds/TC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur would turn over in his grave if he knew popular culture had turned him into Sleeping Beauty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Fairytales

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ahthena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahthena/gifts).



> The full title of this story is "Le Roi Au Bois Revant OR The Dreaming King in the Wood." The French is an homage to the original Sleeping Beauty tale "La Belle Au Bois Dormant."
> 
> You can listen to the Spotify playlist inspired by this fic here: http://open.spotify.com/user/the_collective_blog/playlist/0MbBeU7K8fCcNdspCKttlV

Every fairytale has a beginning. A spark of truth, that when fanned by enough retellings, political intrigue, or a parent trying to teach their child not to venture out into the dark, becomes something else entirely. This occurs to me, not for the first time, as I watch the little redheaded girl clutch the thin book with the gold lettering to her chest. I swipe her mother’s library card, and the child asks, “Mummy, can we get this one, too?” She shows her mother the title. _Sleeping Beauty_.

“Of course, darling.” The woman adds the fairytale to the stack of things she’s checking out.

Sleeping Beauty—the words alone twist a phantom knife in my gut. But over the years I have perfected the blank face of someone who isn’t interested, who doesn’t let things bother them. I’m a duck, and the words are water.

Except they aren’t. For over nine hundred years, they’ve been anything but that.

I know the text of almost every version by heart. I wish I didn’t, but the story lingers like novocaine, the words numb in my mouth.

_“The Princess shall prick herself with a spindle on her fifteenth birthday and die!”_

Arthur would turn over in his grave if he knew popular culture had turned him into a woman.

I swallow the urge to tell the little girl that her book isn’t right, that no one got the damn story right. Instead, I put on the blank face of the underpaid worker, and scan the books.

_“What thing is that which twists round so merrily?” inquired the maiden, and she took the spindle to try her hand at spinning. Scarcely had she done so when the prophecy was fulfilled…_

If I could, though...if I could admit that magic was real and that all fairytales came from truth, I would tell the little girl that Aurora (or Briar Rose or whatever name the warped version you’re reading says it is) is actually Arthur. The same King Arthur in the book that I saw her put back on the shelf just a few moments before—the once and future king, the man with whom my destiny, my entire being, is entwined.

But I can’t say a damn thing. They’d think I was crazy. I can’t say that King Arthur of Camelot was a real person, let alone that his body lies somewhere hidden, cursed into eternal sleep. Someone might lock me up. If they found out about my magic or how old I am, they might even do experiments on me as though I were some kind of lab rat. And I can’t let anyone do that, because I must be here. I must be vigilant. I must keep my eyes open for signs of Arthur.

_Now around the palace a thick hedge of briars began growing, which every year grew higher and higher, till the castle was quite hid from view, so that one could not even see the flag upon the tower._

I scoff to myself. If only my task were as easy as looking for an overgrown hedge. I scan the books and hand them over. I watch the mother and daughter walk out of the library. The little girl is so happy to have books to read, and my blank face slips a bit. A small smile creeps onto my lips, only to fade again with the weight of truth.

I touch my lips with a wrinkled hand. I think that maybe it’s time to be young again. Start looking in a new town. Work in a different library. Or maybe a music store this time. Whatever meaningless job I choose, whatever facade I use as a disguise, my purpose in every city in England never changes.

_After the lapse of many years, there came another King’s son into the country, and heard an old man tell the legend of the hedge of briars: how that behind it stood a castle where slept a wonderously beautiful Princess named Briar Rose, who had slumbered nearly a hundred years._

A hundred years was one heartbeat among many. For nine hundred and ninety nine years I have followed my destiny. I search for the dreaming king.


	2. The Last Dragon Lord

Merlin awoke in a strange room, his heart thundering in his chest. He sat up, and reached for his magic—just there, at his fingertips, at the ends of his hair, it vibrated. Ready to respond to any threat.

No, wait. This was the new place. _That’s right._ He’d moved in two days ago. Merlin collapsed back against the pillows. After all this time, he still wasn’t quite used to the life of the nomad. Many mornings resulted in similar panics, when he expected to wake up in his old bed in Camelot, hearing Gaius snore in the adjacent room. But Gaius was never there. It was just him now. Just Merlin. Alone in the world, moving in the shadows of society. Another meaningless face in a crowd.

In the beginning, when he’d first realised that he wasn’t living a normal lifespan, he’d kept count of the different places he’d lived and the jobs he’d taken. Now numbers were a cruel joke, a reminder of how long he’d been living without Arthur. Without Arthur, without Gwen or Gaius or the knights. He seldom made friends these days. None understood him the way the others had. Even the last of the dragons had died, making Merlin an echo. The last Dragon Lord, a creature of myth himself.

Merlin would go through the motions of the morning like a broken record. Get up, eat breakfast, take a shower, go to work, eat lunch, back to work, eat dinner, read something (anything), go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sometimes things changed, depending on his job, or how much money he had, or if he felt like doing research. Sometimes he wouldn’t get a job at all, and just hunt. Living on the fringes of the world, without family or friends to worry over him, afforded that luxury. He could disappear for weeks and no one would notice. There was no one to fret. No one to assume he’d been wasting time in the tavern.

Sometimes the idea of loneliness lurked in the back of his mind, ready to pounce when he was most susceptible—when he’d crash landed at another dead end or gotten too comfortable in one place. It had gotten easier to ignore his demons as he got older. He chalked it up not to experience, but simply to not caring. He had more important things to do than to feel sorry for himself. The world was crashing down around the ears of the population, and no one seemed to know that the answer was as simple as waking Arthur. Wars and famine and disaster rocked society, but they had all turned their backs on faith. They pinned their hopes on recycling and politicians.

No one remembered the old ways. The magic of the twenty-first century was a joke. Occasionally he would come across someone who claimed to practice the old religion, who said they knew magic and dragons and the triple goddess, but they never really did. He was alone in his understanding of the universe and its future. The imbalance of magic had proved fatal before.

He was careful never to let anyone see his magic anymore. He kept it to himself, behind closed doors, hidden like an ugly bruise. In a way, it was like the days of Uther again, when he had hidden his true self from almost everyone for fear of losing his life to the vengeful fires of the king’s hatred. Now, he used his powers to cook breakfast and turn on faucets. Sometimes he switched red lights to green at intersections, or conjured bread to feed the ducks in the park. He rarely helped people, unless it was to trip a burglar or suddenly empty a gun of its bullets. When he did lend aid, the police were blissfully ignorant—like Arthur had been so many times when it was Merlin, not the young prince, who had been the cause behind a victory.  

Some things, it seemed, would never change.

He sighed and heaved himself out of bed. With a flick of his fingers, the sheets smoothed out behind him, and the pillows fluffed themselves; household magic was almost second nature. It had been a long time since he’d had to worry about a flatmate.

As he padded toward the kitchen, he made a quick detour to grab the newspaper from his front door. He still got his updates the old-fashioned way. While the rest of the world seemed to read the news on Facebook, he only owned a simple flip cellphone—mostly because it seemed that people didn’t like hiring someone who didn’t have a phone number or home address. It irritated him to see kids on their iPhones, constantly twittering or snatchapping or...whatever.

He glanced over the front page while his tea kettle filled itself and began to heat up. Malaysian Flight Confirmed Lost. Man Plows Car Into Crowd. Tragic Mudslide in WA, USA Claims Lives.

His chest tightened with something that was rather like sadness. Gloom? Despondency? Reading the news always made him feel this way, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from buying the paper—What if scrolls from his time were uncovered? What if dragon bones had been found? Or...what if the magic faded, and someone discovered where Arthur rested before he did?

The delicate paper began to crinkle under the pressure of his fingers. “Don’t think like that,” he muttered to himself. “Soon.”

He took a breath and relaxed his grip. Smoothing out the puckered paper, he laid it on the kitchen table (thank goodness for furnished apartments) and proceeded with a meager breakfast, his own voice ringing in his ears like an omen. _Soon._

On his way to the job he’d secured for himself the day before, he found himself more alert than usual. He hadn’t lived in Glastonbury since before the first World War, and things were different. But within a few more days, he would know the route to work by rote. He would know the whole town again, backwards and forwards to the point where he no longer had to pay attention where he stepped. It wasn’t exactly magic—or maybe it was—but as he had aged, Merlin had realised that his memory had sharpened instead of withering. Modern people called it a photographic memory, although no scientist would be able to explain why it got better with age. He thought it rather resembled a dragon’s powerful recollection, and was content with that.

Merlin often thought of Kilgharrah’s vast knowledge and interminable memories, but today the reverie felt different. What is a Dragon Lord without a dragon? He swallowed a lump in his throat, surprised at the sudden onslaught of emotion. It had been years since he’d allowed himself to feel sorrow at the absence of the great dragon, his first ally aside from Gaius. Blinking back wetness ( _Am I...crying?_ ), he swallowed again and kept walking. The air was cold against his smooth cheeks, a decent distraction. After spending the last ten years masquerading as a bearded old man, it was refreshing to feel the wind against his skin.

He rubbed a hand against his cheek as he waited at a crosswalk. Had Arthur grown a beard as he slept? Many of the Sleeping Beauty stories said that the princess’s hair had continued to grow under the enchanted sleep. Merlin tried to picture Arthur with facial hair, but found himself smiling at the thought. During all the years he’d know him, Arthur had remained clean-shaven.

It had been one of those early days, before he and Arthur were even friends, before they trusted each other, when he had first felt the tugging at his heartstrings. When he was nothing but the prince’s new servant, he had brought hot water and a sharp blade for Arthur to shave. Watching the young warrior scrape the dangerous tool against such vulnerable flesh had stirred something in him. Something that never really went away, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

“All right?”

Merlin looked up at the middle aged woman who was watching him with a measure of concern. He realised he’d been standing still, even though it was clear to cross the street. “Fine, thanks,” he replied with a practiced smile. It was a look he had perfected at court, from Uther’s reign until Guinevere’s. There was nothing behind it, not an ounce of sincerity, but everyone always bought it.  

He remembered Gaius’s approval at the first realization that Merlin was a skilled liar. It hadn’t surprised Merlin at all. He’d been lying about magic his whole life. He didn’t see how being at court was any different. The stakes were higher, yes, but lies were lies. A thorn would still prick you, no matter how beautiful its bloom.

A bell chimed as he strolled into the alternative healing shop that was no longer short on help, thanks to him. He had found the Crystal Cave on his first day back in Glastonbury, and couldn’t resist the irony. Apparently in the time he had been away, Glastonbury had become a mecca for unorthodox beliefs in healing crystals, divination, palm reading, and the pseudosciences. The Crystal Cave catered to both the curious tourist and those who truly believed in alternative medicine. As such, it was a hodge podge of t-shirts, trinkets, crystals, and hand-painted playing cards, cluttered to the point of elusiveness.

Not seeing anyone, Merlin ventured further into the shop. The air was thick with cheap incense and dust, and he was almost longing to clean the place. “Hello?”

A clatter rang from behind some shelves, and a skinny girl with dreadlocked hair popped up. “Oh, sorry ‘bout that,” she said. “I didn’t hear the bell. Can I help you?” she rubbed her nose piercing, and Merlin’s sharp eyes caught the signs of impending infection.

“My name is Gwaine,” he said. “I spoke with Patrick yesterday.”

“Oh, good! I was wondering when you’d show. Did Pat already have you sign all the papers?”

“Yeah.”

“Bollocks! Well, let me show you around and then we can get you started in the back room. We just got a shipment that needs to be unpacked,” she stepped over some boxes stacked in the middle of the floor, steadying herself against a curio full of crystals. Some of them were raw, still ensconced in rock, while others had been carved into every shape imaginable. A unicorn with a golden horn seemed to fix Merlin in his sights as the cabinet wobbled.

While the girl—“Priya,” she said, “although my mum gave me the name Abigail. What rubbish”—gave him a tour of the tiny, cramped shop, Merlin listened with one ear. He was surprised to see the amount of King Arthur paraphernalia for sale. The story was popular, he knew, but seeing the countless movie posters, Excalibur replicas—none of them even close to the magnificence of the true blade—and every knick knack that could possibly be tied in to both mysticism and the legend was overwhelming. There was even a dusty Lego set on display, featuring the knights of the round table. Once, he might have studied the small painted features to see if there was any resemblance to the men who had been his friends, who would have died for him. He remembered the knights in his own way, now, by taking their names as his own. As the old man in the library, he had been called Leon. He had spent many a year as Elyan, and even Gaius. The only pseudonym he had never touched was Arthur.

Priya took him to the back room where he put on an apron to shield his clothing from dust. She set him to unpacking boxes of crystal beaded bracelets and watched only for a moment before returning to the front of the shop.

The work was both simple and tedious, a combination that Merlin had discovered he appreciated from time to time. It provided structure when he needed it, but the freedom to let his mind wander when he wanted to think things over. He extracted each bracelet from its plastic bag and set it in the black wooden frame that would display them at the front of the store. Priya had said it didn’t matter what order they were in, but he found himself carefully organizing them by color. Magic could have easily done the job in a few moments, but he needed to work with his hands. He was restless today—unable to displace the feeling that something was different. It wasn’t just that he was in a new place or that he looked young again; the air around him had begun to crackle with energy he hadn’t felt in some time. Something was going to happen. He fished in the bottom of the box for the last bracelet, thinking that he would probably read something horrid in the next day’s paper. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had sensed a catastrophe before it had actually occurred, and it wouldn’t be the last.

The final bracelet for the display was made of black crystal. It was the only one, probably because black didn’t sell as well as the other colors. He scoffed under his breath. Modern society was so quick to associate the absence of all colors with death and despair, but things had been different in his day.

He rubbed the crystals between thumb and forefinger. Whoever would buy it, eventually, wouldn’t have any idea what these crystals could do. They weren’t meant for healing at all, not the way the title of the display claimed. Black crystals had often been used by the high priestesses for protection from opposing forces—they stood for transformative power, security, and mystery.

Merlin blinked, dropping the bracelet back into the box. For a moment, as his skin had slid over the smooth surface, he had seen Arthur’s face. His blood pounded in his ears, drowning out all thought. He snatched the bracelet up, staring frantically into each crystal. It couldn’t have been his imagination. “Crystals don’t lie,” he muttered. “They don’t!” He knew. The visions viewed through crystals always came true.

The face didn’t return, but after a few moments his hands stopped shaking. He placed the bracelet on the display and continued his work. He knew that he would buy the bracelet when his shift was over. He would take it home and stare at it, hoping for another glimpse, another clue. It was the first sign of Arthur in over nine hundred years.

Merlin knew that when he slept, he would dream of Arthur’s face as it had appeared in the depths of the crystal. He would dream of it, and the subconscious fears that had been building for years would vanish. What he had seen would come to pass, no matter how far in the future.

Blinking away the sleep of a millenium, Arthur had looked up at him and smiled.

As he carried the display to the front of the store, Merlin grinned back at the face he had only been able to preserve in his memory. An emotion he hadn’t felt since the golden days of Camelot began to take root in his heart: hope.


	3. Remembrances

Arthur remembered the look on his father’s face when he had held his first sword. Not a real one, because Uther hadn’t let anything sharper than stone near his only son since the day Arthur was born. Arthur's first sword was made of wood, and Uther had treated it as if it were the most dangerous weapon in Albion.

"You must always respect the sword," Uther had told him, "Even if you are its master. Those who do not respect the power of their weapons often die by them."

At four years old, Arthur hadn't understood what his father had meant.

He remembered the look that appeared on his father’s face the first time he can remember mentioning Ygraine, Arthur’s mother. He had reached his sixth winter and wanted to know why no one spoke of her. The king had been teaching Arthur how to properly hold his small wooden shield. At the mention of his late wife’s name, his father's face had become stern and severe, like a statue. Then he had turned his back on Arthur. Later that day, when Gaius had brought him a tonic that would 'make him tall and strong', Arthur asked the physician the same question. With downcast eyes, Gaius had told him, "Your father still mourns your mother's death and seeks vengeance on those he holds responsible."

Arthur remembered thinking that 'vengeance' was a curious word.

He remembered the look on his father's face the day he entered the arena of his first tournament. His armour had barely been worn, and squeaked like the wheels of an old cart. The other knights had laughed at him, saying in voices that really weren't too low for Arthur to hear, "The princeling isn't big enough to wear his father's armour." Later, when he had stood over the same knights—one after another, a succession of triumphs—holding his very real sword to their throats, their songs had changed. "Hail Prince Arthur, the true knight," they had said.

His father had looked proud.

He'd realised that day that to keep them—his knights, his men—singing that same tune, he'd have to fight twice as hard, prove himself twice as much.

Now, he remembers the day he met Merlin.

He remembers that morning, when he sat at his father’s table, and Uther said to him, “It is an admirable thing for a king to have the loyalty of his knights. It is less so for a king to be seen as anything less than that with his men.” His father, of course, was referring to Arthur's friendship with his knights. The night before, Arthur had gone to the tavern and stayed out so late that even the king had noticed. And now Uther was telling him that he was too close to his men, that Arthur had committed a tactical error in the eyes of Camelot’s king. Camelot, always Camelot, was to come before all else.

It really wasn’t that difficult to be who his father wanted him to be: a few laughs at the expense of a servant, a show of skill with the sword on the training ground, and he’d once again establish himself as the true leader. The prince. The future king. A ruler of Camelot. Not a friend.

Never a friend.

And then a boy with the biggest ears Arthur had ever seen called him an “arse,” and Arthur wonders how his life would have been different if he’d never met Merlin. Would he have been the man his father had wanted him to be? Would he have married Gwen? Would he have been a good king?

It’s strange how he barely remembers it now, the first time he met Merlin. He supposes that no one recognises the most important moments in their life as they happen. And yet, Merlin always seemed to. Merlin always remembered everything, Arthur realises.

He needs to try harder to remember. It’s important. He just doesn’t know why.

Merlin.

What would Merlin say now, if he were here? Where was his servant, anyway?

He can almost see Merlin slinking about, grin slightly hidden by that outrageous red neckerchief. He can almost hear Merlin's voice, that short intake of breath followed by "Arthur," the last part almost lost by the exhale of breath, almost as if he's afraid he'll lose the chance to ever say it again. Arthur has never wanted to hear anything so much in his whole life the way he wants to hear Merlin's voice again.

He remembers dragonfire and sorcery and the one time Merlin's voice didn't sound like a prayer. He remembers, but doesn't know if the memory is real or not.

There was a day, he remembers, when he and Merlin hid from his father. He doesn't remember why, not anymore, but he supposes he was avoiding a meeting of the council or somesuch. They had snuck down an abandoned corridor, one that led to the armoury's storage rooms. No one went that way, at least not often, and Arthur had been planning on making his servant dress up in armour much too big for him for his amusement. Halfway down the corridor, they heard voices. Arthur instantly recognized the king's voice and instinctively shoved Merlin into a corner, planning on facing his father himself. Instead, Merlin grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him behind a tapestry. "Merlin, what are you—"

Merlin shushed him. "Just, _listen_ ," he told Arthur.

So he had. He remembers Uther speaking in low tones to a woman. No, not a woman, a sorceress. How could he have forgotten? Merlin? Where was Merlin? He would remember. He always remembered. Why had his father been speaking to a sorceress?

He remembers Uther telling this woman, this sorceress, “She will never belong to you. You have another daughter to raise in your witchcraft.”  Arthur still doesn't know who his father was speaking of, and he wishes Merlin were here to tell him. He remembers the melodious sound of the sorceress' voice—he wanted to emerge from behind the tapestry and fall at her feet and promise her his kingdom. Merlin made sure that didn't happen by using his (surprising) strength to keep the prince pinned against the wall. The sorceress’ voice had been a song that Arthur had never wanted to end, but he only remembers a few of the words now. Fragments and phrases like:

_A scorned woman is a dangerous thing, Uther Pendragon._

_You have denied my child her inheritance. So shall I deny yours._

_Do not underestimate me, King of Camelot. You have failed to kill me before and you will do so again._

Through the thick tapestry, Arthur could barely see the outlined shapes of the king and the sorceress. He saw his father turn away from the magic woman, and with a snap of her fingers the king was tossed against the wall, trapped by her will.

_Morgana, your daughter, will be Queen._

Morgana is his sister. Why hadn't Arthur recalled this before now? Why couldn't he remember? He remembers the sorceress chanting, but it wasn't in any language he knows. She was chanting, and the corridor seemed to grow darker and colder with the enunciation of each word. Magic was decidedly outside of Arthur's realm of understanding, but he knew evil when he felt it, and now more than ever he feels it, like the cold tendrils of winter's fog snaking around him, freezing the very fragments of his being. He feels it now, this very moment, although he doesn't know when or where or why he is. He feels it, the cold prick of evil against his heart, feels the cold turning his soul to a fortress of ice. He is so very, very cold until he remembers Merlin. _Merlin._

He remembers, gods help him, he does. He remembers _Merlin_ and golden eyes and words spoken like a siege against the onslaught of cold. He remembers the warmth of Merlin—a heat surging like dragon's breath through the very core of Arthur—though no part of Merlin touched him. The ice cracks, the sorceress disappears, and there is just Merlin at his side, whispering words he can't understand. And then the memory slips away like water through a sieve, and Arthur doesn't remember anymore.

Arthur remembers a day when the sun set in the east. Since the unusual was an almost-every day occurrence in Camelot, it almost went unnoticed. That day Camelot was distracted by the recent coronation of Morgana. His sister.

He has a sister. He wonders if he's remembered this before. He wonders if he’ll remember it again.

That day, when the sun set in the east, he and Merlin had been hiding in the forest from Morgause's men. They had almost missed the oddity altogether, but Arthur supposes they can be forgiven for being preoccupied with thoughts of survival. He sees Merlin, now, draped in a heavy cloak of fog and enigma, moving simultaneously closer and further from him. It makes no sense, none of it does, and suddenly Arthur remembers. Again.

This is _Emrys_.

This man, this powerful man, is not a memory, but he is something Arthur remembers. Merlin, this _Emrys_ , pulls him into another memory, one that Arthur revisits often, whether by his own inclination or not. The memory is this:

He sits beside Merlin under a great oak tree, one that has seen the lives and deaths of many kings and survived outside the realm of wills of mere mortal men. He and Merlin watch the shadows cast from weak sunlight move east instead of west, and Merlin says, "That's strange, isn't it?"

"Think it has something to do with Morgana?" Arthur asks. Morgana. _His sister._ He remembers.

“I don’t know,” admits Merlin, “But Morgana on the throne of Camelot is wrong, and it’s almost as if the earth knows it.”

Arthur knows now that Merlin knew more about it than he had said.

"What are you going to do?" Merlin asks.

"I don't know," Arthur replies, "Father never trained me for this." And it's true. His father raised him to be a king, not to reclaim his kingdom. He knows how to lead but not how to take, and he wishes not for the last time that his father were with them. His father was a conqueror; Uther had claimed Camelot for his own. Arthur is not his father, however, and the truth of it twists in his gut like a knife.

"Camelot doesn't need your father right now," Merlin says. "Camelot needs _you_." His servant—no, his _friend_ —says the words in scarcely more than a whisper, but Arthur holds onto them like they're the only real thing that Arthur has.

For all Arthur knows, they might be.

It is there, then, under the shade of the great oak, that Arthur sees Merlin for the first time. Merlin, whose smile reaches his excessive ears and whose talents are not in cleaning and servanthood, but rather in (unexpected) wisdom and friendship. When Merlin stands up and stretches, complaining of tree roots bruising his arse, Arthur realises (just as he has realised before and he will realise again) that he never wants to leave this moment. Merlin spreads his arms wide and his smile is big enough to fill the gap. Arthur knows that he never wants Merlin to leave his side, that he doesn't want to remember anything else.

Then Merlin looks at him, as he's done so many times before, and Arthur remembers that he doesn't know everything about Merlin, that there are things Merlin won't tell him. The fog seeps into the memory then, and the eastward-moving sun begins to fade away. Arthur clings to the sight of Merlin, smiling and spreading his arms wide underneath this great oak tree.

That Merlin disappears, and another takes his place. _Emrys._ "Remember," Emrys says.

Arthur doesn't need to remember this, because this, he'll never forget.

Memories dance in front of Arthur's eyes, flickering like candlelight. Coronations, weddings, round tables, dragons. There and gone in an instant.

But the memory of Merlin's smile stays with Arthur, and he keeps it close, wrapping it around himself like armour.

"Remember," Emrys says.

Yes, Merlin. He will remember. For Merlin.


	4. The Knight on the Altar

The bracelet didn’t cost much. It would have, years ago, but Merlin had adjusted remarkably well to inflation and the ever-rising prices of commercialism. It helped when you had a bank account the size of a dragon’s hoard.

He remembered when he had first begun to set money aside for the future. Gaius, on his deathbed, had willed all his belongings to Merlin. “You’ll need it,” he had said. Merlin had thought Gaius meant the medical equipment, the herbs and textbooks, the veritable archives about myth and sorcery that the physician had collected nearly all his life. He only found out after the burial that Gaius had a pretty sum of gold and silver coins hidden behind one of the bookshelves. He kept the money safe, because he couldn’t bear to spend it. It weighed too much in his pocket, the gold too heavy for his sad heart.

Soon after, Merlin took over Gaius’s post. He did not possess the same medical skill, but he was passing fair—and with the help of his magic, which Queen Guinevere and the knights now understood and allowed, he could cure people more quickly and efficiently than Gaius had in his last feeble days.

Gwen had also made him her chief advisor. At first she had been skeptical of his powers, having been brought up in a world that shunned his kind. But she had known him for years, trusted him as a friend and confidant; soon enough her doubts had wavered, and she was asking him to use his magic on a regular basis. Although his title was Court Physician and Advisor to Her Majesty, he knew that behind his back they all called him the Court Sorcerer. At first it had been low mutterings of insecurity and suspicion, but eventually the unofficial moniker stood for power and influence. She had paid him well for his services, and by the time she passed away, he’d had more gold than he’d known what to do with.

That had been the hardest part—watching his friends drop like flies, one by one, while he stayed young. Young, rich, and the most powerful sorcerer the world had yet seen—it was a forsaken existence, more desolate than he would even admit to himself at night in the dark. There were days, especially during the first two and three hundred years, when he would have rather been as dead and forgotten as his comrades. All the money in the world could never replace the people he had lost to time.

But if Merlin’s instincts were right, he wouldn’t be lonely forever. He held the bracelet tight in his grip all the way back to his flat like it was a lifeline. It was a parachute that would keep him from crashing into despair and self hatred. It had given him a glimpse of his king.

If his thoughts hadn’t been preoccupied with committing the crystals’ portent to memory, he might have noticed that there was a spring in his step that hadn’t been there that morning. Indeed, there was a lightness in his chest that he had forgotten ages since. His heart pumped blood as it always had, but now the life force rung in his veins like a church bell— _Arthur. Arthur. Arthur._

He could hardly keep himself from obsessively checking the crystals to see if they would provide another vision of Arthur. He saw nothing more, but his spirits didn’t waver. His whole body quivered with magic, restless from the onslaught of unexpected adrenaline and excitement. Seeing Arthur’s face after so many years was like being awakened from a long sleep. He chuckled darkly to himself as he unlocked the door to his flat. He supposed that he had been in a kind of sleep all these years. Nothing like the powerful curse that kept Arthur at rest, but a foggy half-life that was all his own.

For the first time in years, Merlin had an appetite for dinner. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten something simply for the pleasure of it and not for survival. He called Information for the nearest Algerian restaurant, and ordered couscous with vegetables and merguez. It wasn’t so different from stews he had prepared for Arthur by hand when the knights were out on patrols and hunting parties. While it had often been an element of danger that had brought them together in the middle of the night to make camp on the cold, hard ground, some of his fondest memories were of sitting around the fire with Arthur, Gwaine, Lancelot, Percival, and all the others. They had often teased him about his cooking, saying they hadn’t left any for him to eat. But the jests were good-hearted, and sometimes Leon even helped him wash the pot.

The take-away was tolerable—most would even say delicious—but it was nothing like food that had been touched by magic. In those days, hunched over the fire, he had always used a bit of his power to make sure the food tasted its best, even without a proper kitchen. Arthur was usually surprised that the food was good, even after Merlin had been cooking for him for years.

Arthur was surprised by everything Merlin did well, it seemed. He wondered how surprised the king would be when he found out it was Merlin who had been able to alter the curse of the sorceress, changing it from death to an enchanted slumber. Like flipping a switch to the past, the food soured in Merlin’s mouth, and he heard the chanting as though it were happening then and there. His dimly lit kitchen was nowhere near the grandeur of Camelot, but he felt the evil magic just the same.

The Lady Vivienne, whose identity had been shrouded under spells and foul play—secret to Merlin, Gaius, and even Kilgharrah—had spoken words that chilled Merlin to the bone. _Morgana, your daughter, will be Queen,_ she had promised Uther that day in the corridor, before weaving a spell that clutched Merlin’s heart with fear. She did not use the tongue of the common sorcerer, but something much older that reeked with disuse and dread. How Merlin understood the curse, he wasn’t sure, but he had never forgotten the strange incantation. The words had been the farthest thing from the King's English, but that was how he remembered them now.

_Your reign draws to a close:_

_Your son will take the throne._

_Let me bestow this gift_

_Upon our future king._

_Strong and great he shall be,_

_A knight of immense power._

_Yet by a blade fire-blessed—_

_Excalibur's brother, the son of a dragon—_

_Shall the Pendragon line perish._

He had reacted on instinct alone. Though his breath had caught in his chest, an ache that pressed against his heart, he looked at the prince he would sacrifice anything for, and with the quickness of winter wind muttered a clouding spell. Heat filled the corridor as his eyes glowed with his own power, a magic vastly different than Vivienne’s. Arthur’s gaze, previously alert and wide at the sound of sorcery and danger, had glazed over. He would not remember that he had overheard the foretelling of his own doom—he would not even remember spying on the king.

Merlin had rushed them out of the corridor while Arthur was in a compliant stupor. Now would not do to be caught by a strange and powerful sorceress. He had to think. He had to get Arthur safe in his chambers, and then he had to think. How to undo an archaic curse, how to keep his prince safe, how to protect Camelot?

“Think!” The word burst out into the quiet room like a gunshot. He sighed. He was alone in a flat in Glastonbury, not in Arthur’s chambers. He was here, and there was no point to dwell on the past—there was still thinking to be done. He pushed the food away, and picked up the crystal bracelet.

His thumb traced over the crystals, stopping when he reached the one in which he had seen Arthur. What he had been shown was not the vision of a desperate, lonely man—it was a sign. It meant something, but what? Was Arthur safe? Was he waking up on his own? Had Kilgharrah's protection finally begun to weaken?

Merlin was no stranger to the power of the crystals, but usually the visions were longer, more substantial. He bit his lip in concentration, trying to remember every part of the spells. Vivienne's, his, Kilgharrah's...their magic had overlapped to create the stuff of legend.

The urge to talk himself through the memories was strong. For so long he had been able to mull things over with the help of Gaius and the Great Dragon, but the only company he had now was the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of his wristwatch. Instead of muttering his thoughts aloud, he conjured a simple levitation spell and the bracelet rose to eye level. Merlin folded his hands under his chin and stared at the black depths.

After realizing the severity and power of the strange sorceress's ancient curse, Merlin had done his best to counter the spell. But her words had been grounded in ancient magic that not even Kilgharrah could change. There was no way to get eliminate the curse, so Merlin and the last dragon had plotted together. He had studied every page of Gaius's books, had traveled the kingdom seeking advice, and had received many a slap on the ear from his prince for being tardy as a result. Arthur had seemed disappointed that his servant was spending so much time "in the tavern," and Merlin had longed to tell him the truth. This secret was worse than any other he had kept from the royal family. Uther had no idea what the witch's words meant, and even if he had, Merlin doubted he would have done anything other than hunt her down. "Kill the sorcerer and the curse will break" would not work against Vivienne. She had set Arthur's fate down a different path, closed the gate after him, and thrown away the key.

It was Gaius who had encouraged Merlin to find the way to alter the spell. It could not be cancelled out, but it could be modified within the bounds of the curse itself. It was Kilgharrah who had been able to set the changes in place by ensuring that Arthur would be safe from harm during his enchantment.

Merlin dropped his hold on the levitation abruptly, and the bracelet landed with a dull thud on the wooden table. He lunged for the loo, unable to stop the churning in his stomach. It had been an age since he had let himself think about the day the barrier that kept him from Arthur had been set. It was a memory that haunted him like a child’s night terrors—the day that Arthur had fallen asleep thanks to Mordred’s blade, the day he had been ripped from Merlin’s arms and set afloat in Kilgharrah’s magic. Merlin promptly lost his dinner.

Later, when his stomach had settled, he collapsed into bed clutching the bracelet. Despite his active thoughts, he sank into a deep sleep, the cool sheets refreshing against his overheated skin. He drifted from his busy mind to a different sort of reality. In his dream, he stood in a field of wheat as golden as Arthur's crown. He moved through the stalks, and they began to part. He didn't know where he was going, but his feet took step after step, following the path that formed itself for him. He looked down and saw that he wore the robes belonging not to the gangly servant boy Merlin, but to the wise, wizened sorcerer Emrys. It was curious that he was in this form, and yet his back did not ache with age, nor were his hands warped by arthritis.

The path among the wheat led into a forest. Blood stained the dark ground, and the remnants of a banner lay torn at the base of a tree. The color was destroyed by mud and age, but he knew it to be the Pendragon sigil. His eyes roved the side of the path for bodies, but he saw no one. His feet carried him onward, past broken swords and battered shields. He stepped over a shattered lance, the ground around it peppered by hoof prints. A goblet inlaid with rubies, out of place among the armaments of war, lay on its side, fresh wine seeping into the dirt.

At last he came to a clearing, empty save for an altar. A knight, fully clad in armour, lay on his back. Ceremonial flowers were around him, but Merlin somehow knew the body wasn't dead. He stepped up beside the knight and lifted the helm's visor to see Arthur's peaceful face. Not dead, but asleep. Merlin could see his eyelids moving, and wondered if the king was dreaming, too.

Words bubbled up in Merlin's mouth. "Arthur," came the words, from where he wasn't certain. "Arthur, you must remember. For the sake of Albion and the future you built, you must remember."

Arthur's eyelids continued to flutter, but he made no other movement. Merlin leaned down so that his face was almost touching his king's. Arthur's light breath was against his face, and it was Emrys who spoke again.

"Remember."


	5. Trances

Arthur knows that he is not awake. He knows, because if he were awake, Merlin would not be using his magic in front of him. If he were awake, he wouldn't know that Merlin has magic. But this isn't just Merlin, his annoyingly horrible servant; this is Emrys, who quakes with power. Whenever Arthur thinks of Emrys, he pictures an old man, but it is Merlin who stands before him, taking his hands and placing them on the hilt of a sword embedded in rock. Arthur feels the magic pulsing from Merlin’s hands and into his own, and he trembles.

How many times has Arthur been in the hands of magic and never known? Emrys—no, Merlin, Arthur corrects himself—had told him as much on the day that his father died. “Your own life has been saved using magic more times than you can possibly imagine,” Emrys had said. He says it again now, as together they pull out the sword from the stone, and Arthur asks him, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did,” Merlin says, “You didn’t listen. You never did. You royal dollophead.”

Arthur thinks it is entirely excusable that he never figured out that his bumbling servant was the most powerful sorcerer in existence. He was busy being a prince (and later a king) after all. It’s not like he really had the time to notice Merlin every time he acted strange.

“But you did notice,” Merlin says, “You just didn’t know.”

Arthur brandishes his sword. It feels just the same as when he’s awake and for a moment Arthur is tempted to challenge Merlin. Magic versus steel. Arthur thinks it and remembers that magic has long been challenged by steel; it was the cornerstone of all his father’s political decisions.

“You are not your father,” Merlin says to him.

“You are not real,” Arthur replies.

The hurt look on Merlin’s face lingers in Arthur’s mind long after he forgets this part of the dream. “I may be but a dream,” Merlin says, “but I am more real than almost anything you’ve ever encountered.”

“What does that mean?” asks Arthur.

Merlin shrugs, and the movement is just so Merlin. Arthur has a hard time remembering that this is a boy—no, a man—who could topple kingdoms with little more than a thought. “Will I ever see you, the real you, again?” asks Arthur.

Merlin shrugs again. “Well, that depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“On whether or not you continue to be a clotpole.”

Tossing the sword to the side, Arthur wrestles Merlin to the ground. He remembers, briefly, his father's, and later his uncle's, disapproving words about his associations with "those beneath his station." When it's come to Merlin, however, it doesn't matter. It's never mattered. He pins Merlin beneath him, because it's habit to think that Merlin isn't as strong as him. Arthur knows now that Merlin could easily peel away skin from flesh with a spell of few words, and for all of Arthur's physical strength, he couldn't stop him even if he wanted to.

With Merlin pressed beneath him—thighs touching, Merlin's ridiculous neckerchief backwards, blades of glass stuck in the sorcerer's hair—Arthur forgets again that there is anything else. It is just him and Merlin; there is no magic, no royal court, no wars, no dragons, only Merlin.

The moment is broken when Merlin shoves him away.

"You must miss me," Merlin teases.

"Why's that?"

"You haven't asked me to polish your armour yet."

"Well you know, Merlin, the day isn't over."  

Merlin laughs, and that is a sound that Arthur remembers well. He misses it, wishes he could wake up and hear the real thing, but he doesn't know if or why he is dreaming. So he asks Merlin.

"You already know you are," Merlin says.

"But why?" _Why can't I wake up?_ is left unspoken.

Merlin leans in close, so close that Arthur can feel his breath on his cheek. "Remember," Merlin says. The sorcerer's eyes flash gold.

_Remember._

So Arthur does.

They were in a town so small it didn’t have a proper name. Uther had sent Arthur there to investigate the disappearances of several children; his father had always taken matters involving children very seriously, so it hadn’t surprised the prince when the king had asked him to find the missing children. The king meant for Arthur to go alone, incognito, but Arthur had long since learned that it was useless to ask Merlin to stay behind. (The few times he’d tried, his seemingly-useless servant had blundered his way in anyway.) In cases like this, however, Arthur found Merlin to be extremely useful. He’d never admit it aloud, but the king was rubbish at blending in with the general population; Merlin, however, charmed his way into any situation with his big ears and sparkling blue eyes.

Sparkling blue eyes? Arthur doesn’t remember thinking that.

They were in a tavern, because Merlin always found his way to the tavern (although Arthur now wonders if that was another thing Merlin hadn’t been truthful about). The tavern keeper’s wife had taken a fancy to Merlin, and soon gossip poured from her lips as easily as ale poured into their tankards.

“Four of ‘em have vanished now,” the woman told Merlin. “No sign of ‘em at all. Peter’s girl—Peter’s that bloke over there by the door—she disappeared in the middle o’ the night from her own bed! Poor Peter has been in here every day since. Knows that she won’t be back from wherever she’s been taken to. Just like all the other ones, poor man.”

Arthur opened his mouth to speak, but Merlin kicked him under the table. “My friend here is mute,” Merlin told the woman, “but he’s the best tracker in Camelot. If anyone can find these children, he can.”

Merlin sounded twice as confident as Arthur felt.

The woman hadn’t looked at Arthur once except to accept his money, but now she gazed at him with nothing but skepticism in her eyes. “They say that this must be the work of magic, not that I believe such things, mind you. Can your pretty friend track a witch?”

Arthur didn’t much like being called “pretty.”

Merlin grinned at her and said, “Madam, my friend’s talent is the closest thing to magic that weren’t magic itself.”

“If that be the truth, that’s good news for our village,” the woman said. She leaned in close to Merlin, her heavy breasts mere inches from the servant’s face. “They say,” she whispered in a throaty voice, “that it’s a witch, a witch who eats the flesh o’ children. That she roasts them, the way my husband roasts a hog at Beltane. Mind you, I don’t believe it, but they say there’s truth to every rumour, yeah?”

“Do the rumours say where this witch lives?” asked Merlin.

The woman shook her head. “That’s where the rumours are nothing more than rumours. Some say she lives in the trees, an owl that will swoop down and snatch children from their parents. Others say that she’s a shadow-dweller, that you can never find her because she’s always behind you. A few even say she lives in a cottage made of sweets that will lure children to her front door. Mind you, I don’t believe any of it.”

Merlin ordered another tankard of ale. “Do the rumours have anything in common?” he asked. His voice was disinterested, like he was just talking to make conversation. This was the first moment that Arthur realised that his servant was highly skilled at duplicity.

There were so many things he never knew about Merlin. Would he have the chance to learn them all, to turn Merlin’s secrets into his own?

“No rumour is like another,” the woman admitted. “But some folks say they’ve seen an old woman by the river at night, washing the blood of children from her lips.” The woman poured them another round of drinks. “This one’s on the house,” she said, “You find them children, yeah? I’ll give you all the ale you can handle then, until you’ll have to roll back to where you came from.”

When the woman finally moved off to serve another patron, Merlin turned to Arthur. “So we’re thinking magic, yeah?”

Arthur nodded.

“Any ideas?”

Arthur shook his head.

“Well, you’re right useless when you’re ‘mute.’”

Arthur glared at him.

“C’mon, Prince Ar-mute-er, let’s find these children.”

Arthur tripped him on the way out of the tavern.

Hours later, Arthur and Merlin hid by the river. Merlin had argued with him for an hour about which part of the river the witch would most likely go to to “rinse away the blood of small children.” They had eventually agreed that a cannibalistic witch would be most likely to bathe in a small mostly-hidden cove upstream. Well, Arthur had decided. Merlin had to come along or walk back to the castle by himself.

They had been lounging under a tree, not talking at all, for the better part of two hours, when Merlin elbowed Arthur in the ribs. “Ow!”

“Ssshhh!” Merlin pointed downstream. “Look,” he whispered.

A haggard crone—and ‘crone’ was really the best word for the withered old woman—crept to the river’s edge. She was indeed covered in blood, just as the tavern keeper’s wife had suggested, but she did not stoop to wash it from herself as the rumours said. Instead she spoke in a language ancient and beautiful and terrible until the river sang in return. The water rippled and danced before her, and Arthur was transfixed by it.

“Something is coming,” Merlin warned.

Arthur didn’t ask how Merlin knew that.

A man grew out of the water, lithe and pale like the river’s reflection of the moon. The crone stretched out her arms, speaking once more in the ancient tongue. The man laughed and the old woman fell to her knees. Arthur didn’t have to understand the language to know that she begged for something. The man laughed again and shook his head. He brought the water to her, and it bathed her in consuming and greedy licks against her bloodied skin.

“What is it?” Arthur asked Merlin.

Merlin shook his head and motioned for the prince to listen.

The man of water sang then, and although Uther had paid the best musicians and minstrels in the land to play at his court, it was as if Arthur had never heard music before. There were no words to the song, but the melody was haunting. “It’s beautiful,” he told Merlin, but the words sounded rough and ugly next to the man of water’s song.

“It is,” Merlin agreed.

The man sang until the tips of dawn’s sun broke through the night sky. The old woman—who Merlin and Arthur had completely forgotten while the man was singing—cried and fell to her knees again. The man’s laugh rang once more as he slipped into the river, and it echoed in the rippling water. The crone stood once the dawn had fully broken, and hobbled back the direction she had come from.

Arthur watched her move away but made no effort to follow her, too glutted on the man of water’s song to care about the witch.

Merlin snapped out of the daze much sooner than the prince. “Arthur, we must go,” Merlin told him. “We must follow her.”

“Why?”

“Oh, perhaps because she’s eating children? And then offering their blood to a fossegrim as tribute for his song?”

“What’s a fossuhmim?”

“Oh, never mind. Just get on, would you?”

They followed the witch to her hut in the middle of the forest. The rumours were right about one thing; it did indeed smell of sweets. It would entice any child, of that Arthur had no doubt. Arthur entered the small house first, but Merlin was one step behind him. There was a small table in the center of the one-room hut, and piled on it were the cleaned bones of men. Of children.

Arthur wanted to retch.

Merlin did.

The witch sat at the table, her old eyes staring blankly at the bones. “Arthur Pendragon,” she croaked. “I knew you would come. I knew you would stop me.”

Arthur drew his sword but moved no closer. “How did you know?” he asked her.

She smiled, and the sight made him want to retch again. “A powerful woman told me. One that is very tied to your past, your present, and your future,” she said.

“Morgana?”

She laughed. It sounded like a toad. “No,” she said, “Not Morgana. Morgana is too fixated on her own future to tell me about mine, but I can tell you hers: the blood of a Pendragon shall be shed by a blade fire-blessed.” She picked a bone up from the top of the pile. “What will you do to me, Son of Uther?”

“You will answer for your crimes. There will be justice.”

“Ha! You think you know justice? I have watched my family burn because of their religion, the Old Religion. The true religion. I have seen good men die because lesser men didn’t understand their power. I saw your father cast my daughter aside, and her be taken by your father’s so-called knights of peace and honour and justice, taken like a common whore. My daughter was guilty of no crime other than loving a man, and Uther Pendragon sought her destruction. You speak of justice, but in the blood of Pendragons there is only hatred. I will answer for my crimes, Arthur Pendragon, but there will be no justice. Not today.”

Arthur doesn’t understand the old woman’s words. The only woman that Uther had ever loved was Ygraine. “I cannot right all wrongs,” he said to the witch, “But I can tell you that those children did not deserve to die. To be the nourishment of your ‘religion.’”

The witch laughed again. “It is not my religion. Not anymore. I am a cursed woman, Prince, and the only joy I have left is the one you witnessed last night. Tell me, what did you hear in the fossegrim’s song?”

“I heard nothing.”

“You lie!” she hissed. She turned towards him, and he saw that she had only one good eye and the other was large and unblinking and terrible. She saw Merlin then, too and she hissed, “What did you hear, Emrys? Yes, she told me about you. All about you.”

Who was Emrys? Merlin?

Merlin shuddered. “I heard nothing either.”

“Who is this sorceress you speak of?” Arthur asked her.

The witch clicked her tongue and Arthur wanted to cut it out. “You will meet her soon enough, I would think. She has plans for you, Son of Uther, such great plans.”

“You said you were cursed?” asked Merlin. “By whom?”

The woman quieted. “My daughter,” she whispered, “My own flesh and blood cursed me for not protecting her. The women of my blood have the gift, same as me. Stronger, even. My daughter cursed me to live on the flesh of innocents, and to bathe in their blood. The only respite I have is the fossegrim’s song, but his tribute is the blood of children and he becomes evermore greedy.”

Merlin tried to pull the prince out the door. “Arthur,” Merlin said, “We should go. Come back with the knights, yeah?”

“No. We can’t risk her taking another child. The fossegrim won’t get his tribute.”

The witch reached out, surprisingly fast, and grabbed Merlin’s arm. “You must stop me,” she pleaded.

“How do we break the curse?” Merlin asked.

She shook her head. “You can’t, and even if you could, I wouldn’t let you. I crave the fossegrim’s song too much.” She looked pointedly at Merlin. “You must end it.”

“You will come with us,” Arthur said, “My father will pronounce your judgment.”

“No, I will not.”

“My sword will reach you faster than you can utter a spell.”

She smiled sadly. "You will not remember this meeting, Arthur Pendragon," she told him.

"Are you going to cast a spell on me?" he asked.

She looked at him, eyes full of sadness and longing. "No, Prince," she said, "The spell has already been cast. But not by me."

“What do you mean?” Arthur asked.

“The women in my family have always had the gift of foresight. Your destiny in tangled in a web of magic, one that changes as quickly as the ripples in the river. You will not remember ever having seen me.”

“I don’t understand,” the prince said.

“You’re not meant to. Not yet.” She snapped her fingers and the pile of bones disappeared from her table. “Emrys, do you know what you’re supposed to hear in the fossegrim’s song?”

Merlin nodded his head. Why had she called him ‘Emrys’?

Why doesn’t he remember?

“And you know what it means if you hear nothing at all?”

Merlin nodded his head again.

“What does it mean?” asked Arthur.

She shook her head. “Emrys will tell you, after I’m gone.”

He remembers now, that night after Merlin, of all people, had disposed of the witch, he tells Arthur the legend of the fossegrim, of a river god who fell in love with a mortal woman. She killed herself, Merlin said, rather than be a captive bride to a man of water. “The blood song of unrequited love is how the fossegrim is summoned,” Merlin explains, “It is an ancient magic, from far away from here. The song of the fossegrim makes you forget that pain of unreturned love because you fall in love with the man of water as he sings, and he with you. The words of the song are different for each person. Part of the magic, I suppose.”

“So what does it mean if you don’t hear any words at all?” Arthur asks. “I didn’t hear any.”

“That means that unrequited love is not a problem for you.” Merlin blushes, the faint tinge of pink coloring his cheekbones. “But why would it be for you? You’re the prince, after all.”

“Why didn’t I remember this before?”

Merlin says, “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, Arthur. This is your dream.”

Yes, Arthur remembers again that this is a dream.

This time, he doesn’t forget.


	6. The Abbey

“Fancy a bite, Gwaine?”

Merlin looked up from sweeping the filthy floor of the Crystal Cave’s storeroom. “Sorry?" he said, even though he had heard her.

Priya watched him from the doorway with a small smile, her hips angled against the frame in a way that she probably thought provocative. “Patrick gave me the lunch hour off. He said we could go for a bite, if you wanted.”

Merlin turned his face away. “I’ve got to finish this. You go on.”

“You sure?” Priya sauntered closer. He put the broom between them in a way that he hoped was clear without being rude. “Lunch is on me,” she said.

“I’m sure.”

She sighed, and scratched at her nose ring. “Suit yourself.”

Merlin let out his breath the moment she was gone. All morning, she had been not-so-subtly flirting with him, despite his obvious disinterest. She was a distraction from his thought process. While his hands were busy working, his mind was categorising and deciphering the events of the previous day. The vision from the black crystal and the dream that followed had to be connected somehow.

The tasks in the Crystal Cave were simple, repetitive, cathartic. And yet, he still didn’t know what the dream meant. “Remember,” he had told a sleeping Arthur. Remember what? Was the dream symbolic, or another glimpse of the future? He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had a dream like that, where he had no control over himself. The remnants of the battle through the woods reminded him of the visions he had seen of Arthur’s last battle at Camlann, centuries ago. Was this connected to the fatal fight between Mordred and Arthur—the prick of the sword that fulfilled the sorceress’s words to Uther Pendragon and changed the course of history?

Finished with the floor, he picked up a dust rag and moved into the store. A few tourists spared him a glance before looking back at the tarot card display. Patrick didn't even look up from his iPhone, and Merlin heard the faint sound of laughter from the small speakers. The rotund shop owner seemed to be addicted something called Vines, and was definitely more interested in that than his customers.

Merlin began dusting at the opposite end of the room. Picking up each piece of merchandise and wiping beneath it was slow work. The shelves were coated, and Merlin got the feeling that Patrick and Priya cleaned about as often as they organised. The entire place could be pristine and tidy with a snap of his fingers, but he held back the urge. _Relax_ , he told himself as he wiped the rag over the spot where a crystal dragon had rested. He blocked out the murmurs of the tourists, and Patrick's wheezy chuckles.

The dragon in his hand was smooth and polished, despite the dust surrounding it. It reminded him of Kilgharrah. Dark green scales morphed into bright gold when the crystal caught the light from the shop windows. Eyes, wise and ancient though carved from glass, stared at him, and he felt a pang at the loss of at his oldest confidant. He set the figurine down reverently and moved on. _If Kilgharrah could see me now_...If Kilgharrah were there, he would scold Merlin for wasting his time working menial jobs for menial wages. He would spout something about destiny, and Merlin would hate it, but know deep down in his soul that the dragon was right. He usually had been, the bastard.

Although he had reached the other end of the shelf, he still felt a gaze upon him. The dragon figure was facing away, but Merlin let a sliver of magic loose and the crystal turned slightly in his direction. He felt a surge of warmth and reassurance, and for a moment he thought he saw the eyes flicker. He listened for the tourists—they were still at the other end of the Crystal Cave, asking Patrick how accurate the tarot cards were. Looking back at the dragon, he whispered. “Why not?”

His hands continued to dust, but in his mind’s eye, he let the lifeless figurine morph into the great dragon, the last of his race. Kilgharrah looked younger than Merlin had ever seen him, more peaceful and kind than the old bitter creature he had become after imprisonment in Uther's chains. The dragon nodded at Merlin, and the sorcerer felt like something had been unlocked inside him. _Okay_ , his thoughts were loud enough for the imaginary dragon, _what do we know?_

 _Merlin_ , said the image of Kilgharrah, and the sorcerer shivered at the sound of his own name, _we know that Arthur’s sleep must be coming to an end. Otherwise, you would not see two signs of his awakening after a thousand years of silence._

Merlin ran the rag over a crystal castle. _How do we know for sure? You never told me how long the enchantment would last, that day you separated us. And neither the dream nor the vision showed me how to find Arthur, or how to wake him._

 _Merrrrrlin_ , the dragon chuckled, _how blind you have become. Despite decades of expanding your mind, studying every subject imaginable, becoming an expert in everything from theology to archeology, you have let your inner senses grow dull with despair._

 _And whose fault is that? When I said goodbye to Arthur that day, I thought it was the last time I would see him again. You didn’t tell me that I would live this long, alone with my memories. Of course I despaired._ Merlin gripped the dirty rag, fighting back unexpected tears. His ears grew hot with pain and anger.

_Your memories are the path you must take. You already have the answers you seek._

The conjured image of Kilgharrah faded suddenly, leaving only crystal and a phantom warmth of a magic that was not his own.  

Priya returned—when, Merlin couldn’t say—and picked up the loose thread of coquetry.  He withheld several eye-rolls (the kind Gaius would have hit him over the head for), and tried to remain friendly without encouraging her. It wasn't that Priya wasn't nice or good-looking. Her smile lit up her face the way Morgana's used to, when Morgana still had joy in her, and she moved with the ease of someone who was completely comfortable with herself. But she was no different than the other women (and occasional man) who had tried to stir his interest over the years. He didn't think of himself as necessarily attractive; one too many jabs about his ears had cured him of that. But whenever he was in his young skin, the attention was often pervasive. It was attention he did not want. In the hole that Arthur had left in Merlin's life, these people were but faceless shadows clinging to the walls.

How easy it was for Priya, for all the others, to make their intentions known. The raise of an eyebrow, the touch of a hand, a giggle for good measure, or in this case, an accidental brush against his back as Priya reached for something on a high shelf. She muttered a low “sorry, Gwaine” and all he could think was that Arthur would haven’t have apologised if he had been trying to get Merlin’s attention.

He sighed and handed Priya the Excalibur replica that she’d been reaching for. As she took the plastic sword from his grasp, her fingertips trailed lightly over his skin. These were motions that countless humans had emoted during their lives, but that he never could have with Arthur, nor Arthur with him. He had done his best not to overstep his boundaries. He had allowed himself to enjoy the closeness of Arthur’s company. _It was within reason_ , he thought, as Priya grinned at him. He had never done anything inappropriate, anything that would have gotten him hanged or burned at the stake. But he had been the one to dress Arthur, to sleep at his side on patrol, even after the king married Gwen. He cooked for him, protected him, advised him. Those moments had seemed like enough.

He knew now that they weren’t. They were stolen moments, brief interludes that other men would have simply viewed as duty. How much easier would their lives have been if they’d been born in the 21st century, into a world that was more accepting than theirs? Merlin looked at Priya and Patrick and wondered if they had ever worried about class, creed, or gender.

As she moved away, Priya’s smile softened into a look of longing, and for the first time all day, he didn’t avoid her gaze; for a moment, he let himself pretend that it was Arthur. Fair haired and tall, in his red cloak of the knights of Camelot, the king dwarfed the modernity of the shop. Priya-Arthur looked at him the way Arthur had sometimes looked at Gwen...and the way he had never looked at Merlin, except when he thought the servant couldn’t see.

Patrick cleared his throat, and Priya-Arthur was just Priya. Merlin went back to cleaning the front counter and trying not to listen to the irritating sounds of Angry Birds coming from Patrick's phone. Pushing away memories of what Arthur’s hands felt like, he refocused. _I know that Arthur’s sleep must be coming to an end. Otherwise, I would not see two signs of his awakening after a thousand years of silence. A thousand years of silence, finally broken by two portents._

He hurried through the remainder of his shift, subtly using magic here and there when the others weren’t looking. Patrick said he would close up shop—at least, that’s what Merlin thought he said through the mouthful of bangers and mash—so he didn’t think twice about leaving a few minutes early. If things were going the way he hoped they were, keeping up appearances at the Crystal Cave would be the least of his worries. Another portent, and he probably wouldn’t see Priya again.

A light drizzle kept him company as he made his way down the busy street. When he reached the road that lead to the library, he shook his head and continued on his way to the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. He had done research at that library once, the last time he had lived there. Before, when Merlin still found solace in studying and earning degrees as meaningless as the paper they were printed on, he had fathomed that he would find the location of Arthur’s resting place in books. While going through what modern psychology called the first four stages of grief, he had ignored the logic that no one could find, know, or print anything about Arthur’s whereabouts. Kilgharrah’s magic made certain of that. But he had looked none the less, and for a long while it had kept him sane. He had read every book on Arthurian lore, even though he had lived the legends himself. He had gone on archaeological excursions around the United Kingdom, and had explored every place that tingled even remotely with magic. The results were predictable.

The famous abbey was where many sources claimed Arthur and Gwen had been laid to rest. There was some truth to the theories—though no one save Kilgharrah knew where Arthur had been hidden, Guinevere, who had been a queen in her own right and ruled during a golden age, was buried there. Nearly 200 years after Arthur had gone to sleep, the monks at Glastonbury claimed they had found the remains of the venerable couple. They dug up the bones from the churchyard and interred them within the sanctuary. Merlin had been there to see it, disguised as a priest named Balinor, but said nothing. He could not profess that these were the bones of another man and woman, that Arthur lay in an enchanted slumber elsewhere, or that Gwen was actually ten feet beneath a tree on the opposite side of the grounds. So he remained silent, helpless, and watched as England rallied itself around what the men of the church declared to be sacred, holy relics.

This was not the first time Merlin had returned to visit Gwen. In the years after losing Arthur, they had grown closer in both confidence and private sorrow. Though she had never said it with words, he had seen it in her muted glances. Gwen was more perceptive than most, and she understood his grief better than the knights, or even Gaius. The closest she had ever come to admitting that she sensed Merlin’s deeper feelings for Arthur was on her death bed. With a crooked finger she had beckoned him closer, past the knights and healers and her own children, and whispered, “I’m glad you were with him at the end.”

The ruins of the formerly great abbey loomed before him, the sounds of the city dimmed in its shadow. He still remembered what it had looked like before the impulsive and angry Henry VIII had ransacked and destroyed it. Now, the shell of the cloister and church was open to the air, a chapel for the birds and flowers who had reclaimed their home.

A tour group broke the silence, and Merlin observed them briefly. Students, probably in secondary school, eager to be in the outdoors, but largely disinterested in the history of their setting. He moved around them, determined to avoid distraction. He had wasted enough time.

_You already have the answers you seek._

The illusioned words echoed in Merlin’s mind as he stood over the sacred earth where Gwen lay, forgotten by mankind. The pitter patter of raindrops against the leaves overhead was a music she would have appreciated. “Gwen,” he muttered gruffly, tugging at one of his ears, surprised at his own nervousness—it had been almost a hundred years since he had visited her. “Things are happening. I don’t know everything yet, but I will find him for you. For us.” He laid a hand against the rough bark of the tree and closed his eyes; he felt the life surging through it, the magic within nature itself, and sensed a calm, collected mind. Was it the spirit within the tree, or Gwen, who emanated the aura of peace?

Merlin waited for a moment, absorbing the serene energy. He waited for another sign of Arthur’s awakening, but felt only undisturbed and content tranquility. He opened his eyes as a lone ant wandered over his hand, tickling. As he carefully brushed the insect back onto the bark, the rain came to a halt. The wind murmured to him as he leaned against the tree and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

His back slid down the tree, and he plopped onto the damp ground. His fingers touched the dirt reverently, fingertips skirting over blades of grass as smooth as her skin. _Gwen. My first friend in Camelot. I wish you were here._

“Is this it? Guys, this is it!” came a raucous shout from across the yard. Merlin looked up to see one of the tourist teenagers standing by the plaque that commemorated where “Arthur” and “Gwen” had been found. The group surrounded the plot of earth sectioned off by stones and read the inscription. Magic surged through Merlin’s heart and he longed to call out that they were wrong. Everyone was wrong. Gwen, kind and generous Gwen who had not denied sharing her memories of the man they both loved, had never been discovered.

The rowdy teenagers were eventually roped back by their chaperones, who urged them on to the next site. A few other tourists holding bright umbrellas passed by the plaque, some stopping to read, others missing the mythical significance of the spot all together. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, and in the half light that so often comes after a storm, the abbey looked more mysterious than ever.

As Merlin let the peacefulness of Gwen’s burial site ease his anxiety and annoyance, he observed one last figure. Although clad a baggy sweatshirt not so different from the one he wore, with a hood hiding both hair and face, he had the feeling it was a woman. The head was down-turned, almost shyly, as though to keep the rain off. Hands were tucked deeply into the pockets. But there was no rain now. She stood over the legendary plot longer than anyone else had, and for a brief moment he wondered if she was unable to read the plaque.

A thin hand emerged from the recesses of the sweatshirt’s deep pockets, and even from a distance, Merlin could see it was graceful and well-kept. It reached out toward the plaque, fingers curling, before sweeping the hood away from her face.

Dark blonde hair tumbled over the grey-garbed shoulders, and Merlin’s hand let out an involuntary spark. His eyes heated up in instinctive self-defense, ready to expel power at the slightest provocation, and his heart beat out a frantic rhythm. _Impossible_ , he told Gwen, or Kilgharrah, or maybe himself. _How can she be here?_

He could never forget that face. He had first seen it in the corridor of Camelot, eavesdropping with Arthur. A face as sharp and beautiful as those of her treacherous daughters, and eyes even more cunning than Morgana’s—the Lady Vivienne stared down at the plaque, licked her pale pink lips, and smiled.


	7. Sacrifices

It’s different, now that Arthur remembers he’s dreaming. Merlin is much closer than he was before, although Arthur isn't sure he knows what that means. It's just a feeling, an instinct, a constant humming in the back of his mind. Is this what magic feels like? These coils of whispered promises, each one repeating "Merlin"?

This chant, this prayer, has Arthur missing Merlin. It's almost a violent sensation, this quaking in his bones, as he wonders if he'll ever see his servant—no, his best friend—again. The closer Merlin feels, the more Arthur wonders if his last waking memory will be of the press of  Merlin's cold hands against his face, the cradling of his head in Merlin's arms, the wet sting of Merlin's tears dripping onto his cheek.

No, it isn’t time to remember that. Not yet.

Is this to be the end? He knows he's been asleep for too long, can feel it in the heavy fog that lingers at the edge of his dream.

Will he ever see Merlin again?

As if summoned, Merlin appears before him in his mind, carrying a breakfast tray. The pang in Arthur's stomach is not from hunger; he knows that none of this is real, that Merlin isn't really there. That doesn't stop him from saying, "Late as always, aren't you Merlin?"

"Well, sire, if someone didn't demand a piping hot breakfast every morning, I'd be here on time."

"When are you ever on time?"

Merlin smiled, "Quite often, actually. You just never noticed."

"Tell me, Merlin. Please." He knows this isn't really Merlin, that these are not memories but dreams, but Arthur learned long ago that not everything is what it seems. So he lets Merlin take him by the hand, and the servant’s hands are rough, even in the dream, as he pulls him into another reverie.

The dragon is attacking Camelot. Arthur watches as his home is consumed by dragonfire and vengeance. He watches Guinevere running, terrified, so close to the dragon's flaming breath. He sees her almost dying. His fingers twitch with the impulse to draw his sword, to protect her. Protect Camelot.

The scene changes. He's in a field. The dragon looms above him, and Arthur strikes once, and then he is knocked to the side, forgotten and unconscious.

"Why am I seeing this, Merlin?" he asks. "This isn't how it happened. I killed the dragon."

"I'm sorry, sire," Merlin says. "You don't remember it right."

"Why don't I remember?"

Merlin looks guilty. "I, uh, may have changed your memory a bit."

"What? Merlin!"

"I'm sorry, Arthur. It was for your own good!"

"Show me."

So Merlin does.

When the warlock's voice rumbles in the dragontongue, Arthur is equal parts impressed and upset with Merlin, mostly because, as it turns out, he is not actually a dragon-slayer. Arthur hopes that the court tapestry maker won't be too angry when he learns that he needs to change one rather large tapestry that's hanging in the throne room.

Arthur knows that he's remembered this before; he's heard Merlin speak like this at other times, in other places. It should surprise Arthur that his friend is a Dragon Lord, but it doesn't. This is just another thread woven into the magic of Merlin, and Arthur accepts it, even if it takes away his victory over a dragon, because it's Merlin.

He wonders if he would do the same for Gwaine. Or Leon. Or Lancelot.

"You wouldn't," says Merlin. "Prince Arthur Pendragon was a right proud prat."

"Shut up, Merlin. Maybe I would have. Maybe I would have let one of them defeat the dragon."

"You wouldn't. Not then, maybe later, when you were king," insists Merlin.

"You underestimate me."

"Oh, no, I think I rightly estimate your supercilious nature."

"If I'm so _supercilious_ , why did you let me become king? Why use your magic to save me, if you didn't like the kind of person I am?"

"I never said that," says Merlin. He sighs. "You're thinking it. I've said it before, Arthur. I've said it so many times, more times than you'll remember: you were destined to be a great king."

"But was I? Was I a good king?" Arthur doesn’t remember.

Merlin takes his hand. The dragon disappears and they now sit next to a familiar campfire. Arthur remembers this. They were approaching the Isle of the Blessed, on a quest to undo the damage Morgana had caused. Another mission to save Camelot.

"Do you remember what we said here?" asks Merlin.

Arthur does.

That was the day that Merlin returned from the dead. Well, he wasn't really dead, but for all Arthur knew, Merlin had died on the way back to Camelot with only Lancelot beside him. When his friend had walked through the door, his ears bigger than ever, relief undid the chains of anxious agony that had locked themselves around his heart. He had clapped Merlin on the shoulder, said something like "Welcome back," and carried on with the quest. Later that night, when he and Merlin sat alone next to the campfire (at the time, Arthur had chosen not to read into the fact that his knights had positioned themselves as far away from he and Merlin as possible, but now he knows it was a poorly attempted aim at privacy), Merlin grew bolder and more honest.

"You don't have to sacrifice yourself," Merlin had said.

"I have to save my people." It was his duty to protect Camelot. Surely Merlin knew that.

This time, Merlin had surprised him when he offered to take his place and close the veil between worlds. It wasn't that Merlin shouldn't take his place; as a prince, Arthur could have easily demanded it of him, but it was that Merlin offered. Arthur will never forget the pleading look in Merlin's eyes as he said, "What is the life of a servant compared to the life of a prince?"

What is the life of a servant compared to the life of a prince? Arthur hated hearing their lives whittled down to their stations in society; they were, they are, so much more than a prince and his servant, or a servant and his prince. They are Merlin and Arthur. Or Arthur and Merlin. The order never mattered.

"What is the life of a servant compared to the life of a prince?"

"Well, a good servant is hard to come by," quipped Arthur.

"I'm not that good," Merlin replied.

"True," Arthur said.

He remembers asking Merlin to look after Gwen, to make sure she lived a happy life.  He never once considered taking Merlin up on his offer so that he could stay with her. He also never considered living a life without Merlin; Merlin stepping through the veil may have mended the tear between worlds, but it would have shredded Arthur's existence in ways that could never be mended.

He wonders what Merlin would have said, if he had told him.

"Would you have let me do it?" Arthur asks Merlin. They still sit next to the campfire, and the flame's shadows dance on the other man's pale skin. This is a dream. This can change. He can save Lancelot; he can save Camelot as he was meant to.

"No," Merlin says, "I didn't let you. I'm sorry."

"What do you mean?"

"I, uh, may have knocked you unconscious and planned to offer myself to the Cailleach."

"You what?"

"Well I couldn't let the future king of Camelot die, could I? Some rubbish warlock protector I would be then!"

"I was doing my duty!"

"And I was doing mine!"

"It's my right to protect Camelot."

"And it's my destiny to protect you." Merlin's cheeks huff out in anger. "Do you realise what your death would have done? Do you? Your father would have been even more crushed and Morgana would have been on the throne in a week. Camelot wouldn't need protection because there is no Camelot without you."

"I couldn't let you die." Not for him. Not if he could prevent it.

"Do you remember what happened?" Merlin asks.

"I was going to walk through the veil and...you knocked me unconscious. You said so yourself."

"Why would I do that, Arthur?"

"You just said so. To protect me."

Merlin repeats, "Why would I do that, Arthur?"

Arthur doesn't know. Or maybe he does. But he doesn't. This dream is very confusing. "Will you tell me what happened?"

Merlin shows him. The Cailleach speaks words of foreboding and doom and destiny while Arthur lays crumpled on the stone floor. When Merlin moves toward the veil, he sees Lancelot there, first in line for selfless self-sacrifice. Lancelot walks through the veil and Merlin weeps. Arthur wishes he had been awake to wipe away his tears.

"Is it selfish?" asks Merlin, "To be glad that it was neither of us?"

"Probably," replies Arthur, "But your 'destiny' wrote our story differently than Lancelot's."

"It's our destiny," corrects Merlin.

"Fine. Our destiny is a cruel one, if this is the end of it."

"This isn't the end," says Merlin. "Don't you remember?"

"Why do you keep saying that? Why should I remember?"

It's Emrys who smiles at him and then disappears. Arthur sincerely hopes that no other sovereign ever had to endure a sorcerer for a servant.

He remembers Lancelot's funeral pyre, which was more symbolic than practical since there was no body to burn, and Guinevere's tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. The knight was well-respected in Camelot, and the silent salutes of his fellow comrades-in-arms spoke volumes about Lancelot's standing among the people. Gwen's quiet sobs accentuated the crackling of the flames, and her broken confession about Lancelot's oath to her pierced Arthur's stoic exterior.

Lancelot had promised Gwen that he would see Arthur return safely home and had given up his life to follow through on that promise. Arthur never questioned Lancelot's loyalty or honour, and Merlin had later told him that the knight had sworn that he would never have compromised Arthur and Gwen's happiness together. Even now, Arthur admires Lancelot's love for Guinevere, and he knows that Lancelot loved her in a way that Arthur never could.

Was it fair to Gwen? Did she know when she stood next to Arthur and looked upon her former lover's funeral that the prince would never have done the same for her? Arthur would die to protect her, just as he would for Camelot, but he was no Lancelot.

He thinks the Cailleach would have rejected the offer of his own sacrifice, if she had known.

He offered Gwen no comfort, though they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. He regrets that now, but what could he say? How could he comfort her now that he knows that Lancelot's death meant Merlin's life?

What is the life of a servant compared to the life of a knight?

What is the life of anyone else compared to Merlin?

In the end, Arthur put a gentle hand on Gwen's shoulder, the most outward display of comfort and affection that he could muster, and leaves her alone with her grief. If it were him in Gwen's place, mourning the sacrifice of Merlin, he wouldn't want anyone to witness his sorrow.

What is the life of Arthur compared to the life of Merlin?

"Do you remember?" asks Merlin.

Remember what, Merlin? The guilt for Lancelot's death? Guinevere's tears? The empty look on his father's face when Arthur had explained what Morgana had done?

"Do you remember Vivienne?"

Vivienne.

He remembers walking back to the castle alone, the image of Lancelot's body in flames still fresh in his mind. Merlin wasn't there, for once. He must have been assisting Gaius or drinking at the tavern or, for all Arthur knows, turning toads into miniature versions of himself. The sun was dropping quickly, and Arthur gathered his cloak about him to ward off the night's chill.

"Prince Arthur Pendragon," a woman's voice hissed. She stepped from the shadows, a crouched figure in a tattered black cloak. "Can you help an old woman on her way?"

The woman was tiny and frail and Arthur took pity on her. "Of course, madam." He offered her his arm. "Where do you need to go?"

She took his arm, and her hand was ice to the touch. Arthur had only felt that cold once before, hiding from a sorceress behind a tapestry. The woman is no longer old and bent, but tall and beautiful and terrible. She reminds him of Morgause. He remembers now that this is the sorceress he had seen with his father, but why didn't he remember this before? He watches as her hand extends, fingers transfigured into the long, jagged claws of a harpy. She clenches his arm so tightly that he thinks she'll rip through his chain-mailed armour. The stench of her magic reminds Arthur of a crypt. "What did you do, Arthur Pendragon?" Her claws press the chainmail deeper into his flesh, bruising it.

He reaches for his sword with his other hand, but it is clumsy and he fumbles.

"He cannot protect you forever," she hisses.

Arthur had assumed she meant Uther. He assumes that no more.

His hand wrenches free of her grasp and he draws his sword. "Who are you?" he had asked her. "What do you want?"

"Your birthright, Arthur Pendragon." His life.

"I cannot give you that," he answers truthfully.

She laughs. It sounds like choking. "You will," she promises, "This is not the last funeral you will see, Son of Uther. One by one, I shall take them. Your knights. Your father. Guinevere. And, at last, when you are alone, I shall take your final breath into myself and your precious Camelot will no longer serve the Pendragons. You will be forgotten; your ashes, like dear Sir Lancelot's, will blow away in the wind. Your life will have meant nothing."

Her choking laugh echoes in Arthur's ears long after she's disappeared.

Arthur never told anyone.

 


	8. Return to Avalon

It was not the first time Merlin was scared enough to hide instead of face his enemies, and he figured it would not be the last.

Concealed behind Gwen's tree, his head fell to the bark in despair. The rough wood scratched his skin, and for half a moment he thought of Vivienne's sharp fingernails. They had scraped him too, once.

He struggled to get his wits about him. The Lady Vivienne was alive, although everyone else from their era was long dead. _Right? I can’t be imagining this._ He took a few deep breaths and thought of what Arthur would say if he were there.

"See your enemy. Don't let him see you, _or_ your ridiculous ears."

Merlin chanced a glance around the tree. There was no doubt that this was Vivienne, the woman spurned by Uther, the mother of Morgana. She stood with the impeccable posture of a woman at court; someone who was used to having eyes on her; someone who liked being watched, despite her years in hiding. She still stared down at the plaque, but her sinister smile had become a scowl. Morgana's face had often worn that same sour frown. Glowering at the ground, Vivienne pulled her hood back up over her flaxen locks, slipped her hands back into her pockets, and slinked away as quickly as she had appeared.

There was no time to think of a plan, or even to be afraid any longer. Merlin dashed from behind the tree and followed as stealthily as he could. Lithe and slim, he had always been a quiet enough tracker even without magic. Now, he dared not use it in case she sensed him.

He kept a reasonable distance and prayed to all the gods he knew that she wouldn't pick up on his aura. He hadn't noticed hers—perhaps they were shrouded from each other just as much as Arthur was hidden from them because of Kilgharrah's lingering magic. Whatever the reason, he counted himself lucky that she never glanced over her shoulder as he would have.

As they reached the street, a tour bus full of rowdy American travelers was disembarking. "And we're walking! We're walking!" the frazzled tour guide tried to make himself heard over the racket. Vivienne melted into the crowd, and by the time the guide had directed the tourists toward the abbey, Merlin had lost her. He went up and down the nearest streets, but the dark hoodie and slim figure were nowhere to be found.

He wound up at a bus stop, and crumpled onto the empty bench. His fear deflated into dread.

_She's looking for you, Arthur. She can’t find you before I do. She can’t!_

_She's looking for me_ , a voice agreed.

The words were like a punch in the lungs. The voice hadn't come from inside his head. It was just there, hanging in the air as though the once and future king were sitting beside him.

"Arthur?" he whispered.  

The sound of traffic, whirring wheels and bicycle bells, was the only reply.

"What do I do about Vivienne?" he tried again.

"What's that, you say?" came a gruff voice to the left. A short old man with a cane, stooped with age, shuffled to the bus stop and sat on the far side of the bench.

"It's nothing," Merlin tried his best to smile. He remembered all too well the aches and pains that came with being elderly, and not all of them were physical. "Have a good day then?"

"Not shabby," said the man, laying the cane across his knees. "Had a few surprises, even."

Merlin nodded. "Yeah. Me too."

"That's putting it mildly, wouldn't you say, boy?" his voice deepened into something far more ancient.

Merlin blinked stupidly at the senior. "I'm...sorry?"

The man looked at him and ran a hand over his short grey beard. He laughed. "Ah, there's me bus. I've sat down for nothing. Help an old man up, won't you?" He extended a hand.

The man's grip was strong. _Too strong_ , Merlin thought as he aided him toward the waiting bus. The man put his cane up on the landing, but before stepping up he gripped Merlin's hand like a vise and pulled the sorcerer down to his level. "Find Freya," he said again in the deeper voice. His eyes twinkled arcanely as he let go and climbed the bus stairs as easily as if he were a teenager. The door swung closed behind him, and a surge of magic washed over Merlin.

He stood, stupefied for a moment, and wondered too late if he would look silly chasing the bus; it was long gone by the time he was able to make his legs move. The man's voice had almost sounded like Kilgharrah's might have it if it were coming out of a human, but that wasn't what had him dumbfounded. Merlin had forgotten about Freya until the moment her name had slipped from between the man’s chapped, wrinkled lips. The feeling of dragon magic lingered as Merlin walked home, a warm reassurance in a field of doubt.

Much later, when the sun had set and the rain had started up again, Merlin sat alone in his flat with a case of Old Golden Hen, still feeling dumbstruck. The other magic had long faded, and taken the fresh smell of a summer at Camelot with it. Merlin shivered in its absence.  

The man had known about Freya. The man who looked like a grandfather who lived in a bedsit had spoken the name of the Lady of the Lake. Merlin could count on one hand the people who knew about the real Lady, not the Arthurian myth, and they were all long dead and buried. Even fewer knew about the girl she had once been. The girl he could have imagined himself loving.

It was only after two bottles that he let himself admit the problem aloud. "A thousand years," he said to the empty sitting room. "A thousand years and I didn't remember Freya. For a thousand years I didn't think about the Lady of the Lake. How could I have forgotten?"

After four bottles, he was flat on his back on the floor, imagining her pale skin and ebony hair. She had trusted him. She had saved him, too, even though he couldn't save her. She had given him Excalibur back when he had no other way to save Camelot from Morgause's immortal army. Freya had done more for Camelot than anyone had ever known.

When the last bottle of the six pack was empty, Merlin was retching into the toilet.

He didn't remember crawling into bed, or even using magic, but he was under the covers and shivering. The black crystal, the glowing eyes of the dragon figurine, the appearance of Vivienne, Arthur's voice in thin air, and the old man at the bus stop...each part of the puzzle tumbled in his head, his mind trying to process what it all meant, even as his body detoxed from all the beer he'd forced down.

Eventually, the trembling stopped, and a fitful sleep washed over him, grasping at his toes and dragging him under. Even as he slept, he knew he was dreaming. He didn't want to dream—not this one, not again. He stood over Arthur's limp body as it lay in a boat. He wasn't sure where the boat was. The world around them was hazy white, the fog so thick he could barely even see Kilgharrah a few feet away. He knew what would happen. Kilgharrah's contribution to altering Vivienne’s fatal curse involved providing a thick barrier to keep Arthur safe from all magic-users. Merlin included. This would be the last time he saw his king.

He had said his goodbyes already, the moment Arthur had succumbed to the enchantment of Mordred's blade. Arms wrapped around him, Merlin had wept. He had felt Arthur's soft breath against his cheek, the warmth of his body, but it was no comfort. With no way to break the curse, Arthur was as good as dead.

Merlin looked at the boat, and remembered. That day, a thousand years ago, he hadn't known that he would live longer than other men. If he had, maybe their farewell would have been different. He could have kissed his king and said, "Til we meet again," instead of clutching at the dented, war-worn armour and wishing the sword had stabbed him instead.

He raised his face to meet Kilgharrah's gaze, and thought that this was different. It hadn't happened this way, before. In his grief he had avoided the great dragon, afraid to let the creature hear his sobs, afraid of what he might see in those deep golden eyes. But now he looked, and he saw.

The dragon blinks, and the world around them shifts. The haze becomes the courtyard of Camelot, and Arthur is no longer asleep. The king walks slowly, as though in pain, and Merlin doesn't need to look to know what Arthur left in his wake. “Is this still my dream?” he thinks. “I have never seen this.” He watches Arthur pull his cloak closer around him, and wishes he were as close as the crimson fabric. But magic fills the air, and Merlin nearly chokes on its power. He falls to his knees and feels the hard stones beneath him, as though he were truly back in Camelot.

"Arthur Pendragon," a woman's voice cuts through the magic like a serpent's strike, and Merlin looks up. He sees a figure in tattered robes, an old woman. He knows it is Vivienne. She exchanges words with the king, but Merlin hears only his own thoughts. “This is not a vision. This is a memory.”

His head drops to his hands and he yearns for Kilgharrah. But there is only the smell of the fire behind, the ache in his knees from where he fell, and the magic all around. A negative energy, full of the stench of death and the old things better left forgotten. Her words begin to break through his panic. "This is not the last funeral you will see, Son of Uther...One by one, I shall take them...And, at last, when you are alone, I shall take your final breath into myself...You will be forgotten...Your life will have meant nothing."

"NO!" the scream rips itself from Merlin's throat, raw and broken. "He is not forgotten!"

He raises his head, and it is only Arthur and Merlin in the courtyard. Arthur's sword is drawn, and he has a sad smile on his face. "Merlin?" he asks.

"Arthur."

"I was afraid to tell you," he says. "I didn't know what to do. I was scared and alone."

"You were never alone," Merlin cries. He tries to rise to his feet but a weight crushes him down until his face meets the stones.

Gasping, Merlin awoke, his arms flailing as he tried to push himself away from the stones, to not to be crushed. But instead of stones, there were only soft pillows in his face. He stopped, and made himself regulate his breathing. Drenched in sweat, he flicked his fingers, and with a burst a golden magic the overhead fan began to rotate. Faint morning light tried to push in through the curtains.

He sat up, and pulled his shirt off his lanky body. He needed a shower, and badly. He smelled of sweat and beer and vomit. And the dream. If he took a deep enough breath, he could still smell Lancelot's funeral pyre.

But it wasn't really a dream, was it? He mused as he lathered up in the shower, letting the hot water wash away his tension. There was something to be said for modern plumbing, and he thought for a moment that Arthur would appreciate running water as much as he did. For a split second, his hand wandered down his front and he imagined that Arthur was there with him. They were safe from prying eyes, hidden behind the shower door and the swirling steam. With a gasp, he turned the water cold, and shook the fantasy away. _Not yet_ , he told himself. _You find him first. And then maybe..._

 _Maybe what?_ asked the disembodied voice.

Merlin nearly slipped on the wet tile, soap running into his eyes. Once he had his footing, he threw the glass door open. The bathroom was empty. "Arthur?" he said. "Arthur, can you hear me? Where are you?"

_She's looking for me. I should have told you. But I couldn't remember. Why can't I remember?_

The water turned off and Merlin scrambled for a towel, hastily drying himself. "What do you remember?" he asked, trying to keep the connection as long as possible. A million questions bubbled to his lips, but he didn't think that Arthur could answer them, wherever he was. Did the questions even matter? The sudden bond, stronger than the words at the bus stop, felt like the final piece of armour being fit to Arthur’s body—this was the closest Merlin had been to complete since the moment Arthur had said “thank you” before closing his eyes all those years ago. “Tell me.”

_I—I don't know. Things I had forgotten._

Flashes of memories slammed at Merlin and he saw things behind his eyes as Arthur saw them. The two of them in the corridor when the Lady Vivienne threatened Uther. In the tavern inquiring about the disappearing children, and the witch's haunting words that followed. Sitting beneath the oak tree and watching the sun misbehave. And for the first time, Merlin felt the emotions of another human being. Arthur's memory was steeped in Arthur's sentiment. With Arthur's eyes, Merlin saw himself smile at the king. He stretched beneath the great oak, the weak sunlight dappled over his skin, and he felt the rush of affection Arthur felt at that moment. The contentment, and the wish to never be parted from each other.

It was something like love.

The flood stopped, and Merlin understood.

He dressed hastily, still feeling the connection to Arthur. Like an itch, he could no longer ignore it. He wasn’t sure how long it had been there, but now it was all he felt—Arthur’s mind was a surge of electrical energy, surrounding Merlin and making him feel whole and alive. “It all makes sense now,” he said. “At least, I think it does.” Arthur didn’t reply, but Merlin felt a response akin to curiosity.

Locking the door of the flat behind him, he couldn’t help but smile. “The magic, Arthur,” he mumbled under his breath as he darted down the hall. “It’s what’s been making us forget. Kilgharrah’s magic kept you from me, but it must be fading now. And when his magic fades, so does the other magic that ever touched you. All those things I had to hide from you, you are starting to remember.” Displeasure oozed through the muted bond. “I’m sorry. I am. Some things had to be kept from you. I wanted to keep you safe. That’s all I have ever wanted. It was my destiny.”

_Emrys._

“Yes.”

_You kept things from me._

“Yes.”

_Why?_

“Is now really the best time for this?”

_Idiot._

“Prat. Anyway…” Merlin exited the building, and found rain. Pulling his hood up over his head, he ducked around a crowd and made his way east. “...the old man said to find Freya, and that was when it all started to come back. As you begin to remember, so do I. That’s the only thing that makes sense. ”

_Complicated._

“Magic usually is,” Merlin chuckled. The laughter fizzled when he realised some other pedestrians had heard him. “Morning!” he said cheerfully as they passed. They gave him inquisitive glances, and he knew they were looking for a bluetooth to see if he was really talking to himself. It only made him laugh the more.

He paused at the crossroads, the mirth dying on his lips. He had dashed out of the flat without even knowing what he was doing. _As usual_ , quipped Arthur. Merlin wanted to smile—it felt good, better than good, to hear Arthur's good-natured jab—but he felt so foolish for not having a plan.

A sudden warmth in his pocket plucked him from his worry. Plunging his hand into his jean pocket, his fingers curled around the now familiar curves of the black crystal bracelet. He withdrew it and rubbed the smooth gems between his fingers. He was certain that he had left the bracelet on the bedside table the night before, but didn’t think that now was the right time to worry about it. Instead, he focused on the strange heat emanating from the crystals, the sudden scent of summer that didn’t make sense in the rain. He knew then that he had to keep walking, toward the heat and the smell of magic from another age.

Mustering the nerve to follow something he didn’t understand, he put one foot in front of the other. The heat lessened minutely after a few steps, and he immediately changed direction. _What on earth are you doing?_ Arthur said. Merlin smiled when the crystals got hotter. He kept walking, every sense trained on the varying intensities of the bracelet. “This is the weirdest game of Hot or Cold I’ve ever played,” he said.

_What’s Hot or Cold?_

Merlin laughed. _I’ll explain later_ , he assured the dreaming king. _I’m on my way to you. I can feel it._

The steps came to him like something from another life. Guided by the heat of the black crystals, Merlin noticed that details of the city and its landscape that had been somehow unimportant before were now focused and sharp. He walked for what seemed like an eternity, changing directions only a few times, before the bracelet led him to an old road outside the city. Even as he walked, he wasn’t sure how he knew where to go. It was more than just the intensifying heat of the gems now. It was memories from the day he had dreaded dreaming of—memories that came after his footfalls, not before. _Freya_ , said the old man’s voice. _Find Freya._

The road was slick with rain water, reflecting the grey clouds overhead, and the overgrown trees and bushes that had probably marked the path that was once there. There had been a path there, Merlin remembered it now. Before the paving of the roads, before Glastonbury was founded. A path by the lakeside.

He slowed. There was no traffic on this old road, not since the last delivery truck had splashed him a mile back. But there was a light humming, a music that he couldn’t quite place. More than the harmony of nature, more than his own magic. He faced the green barrier by the road, and watched as it began to shimmer. He closed his eyes and thought of Freya, of Excalibur, of...there was something else too, something in this lake he couldn’t see, something important. He opened his eyes, and there was a break in the hedge. He stepped forward through the trees, his jacket snagging on stray branches. The bracelet burned white hot in his hand, and he let it fall to the ground. A valley lay before him, gleaming as though made of diamonds. He felt someone else’s magic, something older than Kilgharrah, that smelled as withered and decayed as the lingering power of the crone and the fossegrim. He heard the sound of the rain hitting water, and then—

The lake appeared. _Avalon_.


	9. Darkness

The day Arthur’s father died was the day that Arthur realised that Merlin meant much more to him than almost anyone else in Camelot. He had kissed his father’s body, once, on the forehead, the way Uther had done for him as a child. Long he had stood over the dead king, knowing that as soon as he left the chamber, he could cry no more. When the sun peeked into the eastern sky, he turned aside from his father’s body. He remembers opening the door, after holding the all-night vigil for his father, and seeing Merlin sprawled on the cold stone floor, the lanky man blinking exhaustion away in the pale dawn light.

“Merlin,” he had said, “It’s a new day.” _What am I going to do now?_ was what he had meant. What was he to do without his father, his commander, his king? Could he rule as his father had? Could he be the king that Camelot needed?

The Merlin in his dream stands, and Arthur remembers the instinct to take the the servant in his arms, to find comfort, to not be a prince (or a king), but just be Arthur for once. He couldn’t have done that, though. To give into the instinct was to lose sight of Camelot, and even in his dream, it’s a difficult instinct to battle. “You’ve been here all night?” the prince asks.

“I didn’t want you to feel that you were alone,” Merlin says.

He remembers telling Merlin that he was a loyal friend, but in this dream, Arthur can say so much more. “I was never alone,” Arthur says, “I always had you at my side. Sometimes you were even useful.”

Merlin smiles, but it isn’t happily. “I did leave you, once, don’t you remember? You called me a coward.”

Arthur doesn’t want to remember that day. Not yet.

“Arthur,” Merlin insists, “Remember.”

No, not that day. Not now. It’s too soon, he can feel it. Instead he thinks of the first week he was king. The crown had set heavy on his brow, cold and unfamiliar, a golden reminder of his father’s absence. The throne was stiff underneath him, and his arse grew numb when he sat too long.

He had never yearned for his father’s presence as much as he had sitting through that first day of audiences before the king. By midday, he had settled three disputes about the property of livestock, accepted the gift of two dozen of the “finest chickens in Albion,” and gently refused the hands of five daughters of members of the court. His last audience of the day was an old woman, bent and haggard. She seemed familiar, but Arthur supposed she just had one of those faces. He travelled through the marketplace often enough that he was sure he'd seen her before.

Yet when the throne room dimmed like storm clouds covering the sun, and the woman's voice shook like thunder, the new king suspected sorcery might be involved.

Not for the last time, he wonders why he didn't remember this before. A sorceress in the throne room was not a common event, Arthur knew, but it was becoming more common than he would have liked.  

"This is a dream," he says to himself. "This is only a dream."

But is it? The fog that surrounds him, pushing, edging in on his consciousness, it is beginning to lift now, isn't it?

The sorceress, hobbled and decrepit with age, stands before him. She has frozen his guards, somehow, and where is Merlin? In the blink of an eye, she transforms herself, now a tall and proud woman, with a green gem on her brow and a cloak as black as a raven.

"Your Emrys," the sorceress says. She means Merlin, he knows now. Her voice is sultry and smooth like a fine wine. "He cannot undo what has been done."

Emrys is not his.

The woman laughs—the Lady Vivienne, Arthur remembers—but it is cold, so cold. "He is yours, just as you are his. Your destiny, Arthur Pendragon, is a great thing." She mutters an enchantment, and her eyes flash gold. She shows Arthur what he's always wanted: a Camelot unified by peace, prosperous with honour, Guinevere as a respected Queen. Merlin always by his side. "It is a great thing," she repeats, "A great thing indeed that Uther destroyed the day my daughter, his daughter, was born."

Uther's daughter. Morgana. His sister. He knows now. He won't forget again.

"I promised you that Sir Lancelot's death was just the beginning, Son of Uther," the Lady Vivienne says. "My daughter, the High Priestess of the Old Religion, ensures that it will not be the last." Her voice cracks like a whip across Arthur's dream. Or is it a memory?

Where is Merlin?

“Uther made me many promises, long ago,” Vivienne continues. “Even promised me half his kingdom, things that my dear husband could not give me.” She smiles at Arthur, and for the briefest of moments the sinister veneer cracks, and Arthur sees the face of a woman, rejected and scorned. “I had hoped,” she whispers, bringing her sapphire eyes to his, “I had hoped to raise you as my own. That my daughters would know you as a brother and a friend.” The veneer shifts back into place, and the Lady Vivienne’s eyes are cold and unforgiving once more. “All that might have been, all that you could have been changed the moment Uther declared war on magic. The day he branded me a magic user and left me to die. The day he left my children without a mother.”

“I am not my father,” Arthur says.

“Do you believe that, Arthur Pendragon? Will you stand before the Disir and swear it?” Vivienne looms before him, as powerful and terrible as dragonfire. She raises her arms, and bids the very fabric of the earth to listen to her. "I promise you this, Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther, the sins of the father shall be reaped unto the son."

The sins of the father? His father?

 _She's looking for you, Arthur._ The words scatter the image of Lady Vivienne like ashes in the wind.

 _Merlin?_ Arthur knows that voice, knows it better than his own. That was no dream, that was Merlin.

"Merlin," he whispers, and it's a prayer. Long had he spurned the Old Religion and the ways of magic, but if magic gave him back Merlin, he'd embrace it like an old friend. "She's looking for me," he says. And it's true. The more he feels Merlin, the more he senses Vivienne, a darkness threatening to reach in and strangle him while he dreams. Merlin, he needs Merlin. This is not a battle he knows how to fight, but he pushes as hard as he can against the darkness, shoving it away. It's not gone, but it begins to replace the fog on the edges of his dream, and he knows that it is Vivienne's doing. He pushes, again, harder, and the darkness retreats, a respite in the onslaught.

His battle against the dark has unforeseen consequences. He is beginning to wake up. The fog dissipates a little more, and he can feel again. Like a drowning man grasping  for the water's surface, he reaches out toward that distant humming, the one that echoes MerlinMerlinMerlinMerlin.

He reaches out, and he falls, tumbling, spinning, dying, over and over and over again. He falls into the darkness, and the fog engulfs him. He screams for Merlin, his Emrys. He remembers the judgment of the Disir, and as he falls Vivienne's vow chases him.

The sins of the father shall be reaped unto the son.

The sins of the father shall be reaped unto the son.

The sins of the father shall be reaped unto the son.

He remembers the day his knights found the graves of Druid children. He remembers the stab of disappointment in his gut when he realised that it was the doing of Uther Pendragon, his father.

The sins of the father.

He thinks of Mordred. The boy who became a knight. Who became a friend. Who became a traitor. Who became a murderer. Arthur thinks of the day Mordred helped him save Guinevere from Morgana's evil clutches, and how he would have trusted Mordred with his life. The boy had been his friend, and the king is loathe to reconcile the boy whom he taught to properly hold a sword with the man who thrust a dragonfire blade into his belly.

Is he so different from his father? He, too, had wronged the Druids. Mordred’s lover, that Druid girl Kara, she had known the truth of him. “You deserve everything that’s coming to you, Arthur Pendragon,” she said, pronouncing his name like a curse.

Perhaps it was. Perhaps the Pendragon name—the name which should have stood for peace, unity, prosperity—stood for war, persecution, tyranny.

The sins of the father.

He falls and the darkness is broken by flashes of light, the faces of those he wronged. The faces of magic. Mordred. Osgar. The dragon. Morgana.

Morgana. It hurts even now, to think of the girl he once chased through the corridors of the castle becoming such a cold and haunted sorceress. Arthur knows she’s dead. He wonders if anyone buried her. If anyone remembered the Morgana who practised swordplay. If anyone remembered the young girl with sparkling eyes who absolutely refused to let Arthur call her anything other than “Morgana the Victorious” for weeks after she won their first “battle”.

Whether by Vivienne’s will or not, he had known Morgana as a sister. As a friend.

A ghostly Morgana appears, a spectre of regret. She looks as she did the day he won his first tournament, when she wore yellow flowers in her hair. “Arthur,” she greets him. “You did well in the tournament. Uther will be proud.” She smiles. “Tis a pity I could not enter, but then, you would not have won if I had.”

“Let us duel now,” the prince challenges her. He knows this is not Morgana, that this is a shade, but the smile she wears makes him wish this was more than a dream.

“No,” Morgana says. Her eyes are soft. “Let us ride.”

The dream shifts, and Morgana rides next to him on her dappled mare. Uther had given her the horse on the twelfth anniversary of her birth. He notices now that Morgana’s eyes are the same as her mother’s, and he wonders if the Lady Vivienne once had eyes that sparkled with laughter.

It’s strange, Arthur thinks, that he sees so much more now that he’s asleep.

“C’mon, Arthur, don’t be slow,” Morgana teases. Her dark hair floats behind her as she encourages her mare to ride faster into the woods, until she is but a speck in front of him. When he catches up to her, they are in the spot where she died. “What a joy it is to see you, Arthur,” she says. Gone is the girl. Before him is the sorceress. “Look at you: not so tall and mighty now. You may have won the battle, but you’ve lost the war,” she taunts.

Morgana doesn’t have to do this. This is a dream. This, this Arthur can change.

“You’re going to die by Mordred’s hand,” she promises.

Arthur can change this. Morgana can be saved.

The sins of the father shall be reaped unto the son.

He watches Morgana die, again, and again. Sometimes by Merlin’s hand, sometimes by his. She is never saved. The last time he kills her in the dream, she presses a yellow flower into his palm, as he cries. “It’s time to wake up, Arthur,” she tells him, and suddenly she’s the girl, his childhood companion once more.

“I’m sorry, Morgana. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry for what our father did, for what I did. I should have been a better king. I should have done better for Camelot.” Arthur cries for his friend, his sister. He understands now the truth of his father. Uther was a stronger king, but a weaker man. If Arthur were not Uther’s son, would Morgana have been saved?

The sins of the father.

The fall is quicker now, with the dark pressing in through his nose, his throat, his eyes, his skin. It crushes him. He thinks of the Disir. They had offered another path, a way of redemption. An escape. _You are known, Arthur. You have always been known._ Like Uther Pendragon, Arthur had spurned magic, had wronged magic, had rejected magic. If he had taken the Disir’s redemption, would things have ended differently? Would Mordred have been spared? Would Morgana be saved?

Merlin.

Of all the magic users he had wronged, perhaps Merlin’s story is the one he regrets the most—the secrets, the lies, the fear. Mostly, Arthur regrets the story that wasn’t told. Merlin’s place in Camelot’s history should have been sung throughout the kingdoms, not whispered about in dark corners and abandoned halls.

The sins of the father shall be reaped unto the son. Perhaps this fate was inevitable. Perhaps Uther had ensured it. He falls back into a familiar stretch of the dream. He is at Sir Lancelot’s funeral pyre, and the Lady Vivienne approaches him. She predicts his father’s death, and she tells him his life will have meant nothing. Now that Arthur sees, sees what he and his father have done to the world, done to magic, perhaps Vivienne is right. Perhaps Arthur Pendragon is best left to his dreams, alone. Forgotten.

_No! He is not forgotten!_

Merlin?

His servant—no, his friend—appears in the courtyard, shattering Vivienne’s image. _Arthur._

The sound of Merlin’s voice breaks down a wall in the stronghold of Arthur’s soul. It resurrects when Arthur remembers what Merlin has seen. Merlin was not the only one with secrets, when he was awake. He doesn’t know why he didn’t tell Merlin about this encounter with Vivienne, but he suspects it was because he was scared. Scared of what the sorceress could do to someone as helpless as Merlin.

He now realises that Merlin has never needed rescuing.

_You were never alone._

And then Merlin is gone. Arthur really, really hates that he is dreaming. He wants to wake up. He wants to find Merlin. He climbs back up, out of the darkness, through the memories of Merlin. Merlin’s red-tinged ears after he’s had too much to drink. Merlin’s eyes when he thought of a new insult for Camelot’s prince. Merlin’s voice when he told Arthur about his magic.

He finds Merlin under a waterfall. Since it’s a dream, Arthur looks his fill, and allows himself to appreciate the toned spanse of alabaster skin. The humming at the back of his mind, the one he knows is Merlin, dances like lightning in a stormy sky. The dream Merlin looks at him, but his mouth does not open when he speaks. _Not yet. You find him first. And then maybe…_

Maybe what?

_Arthur? Arthur, can you hear me? Where are you?_

All the sorcery in the world can’t give Merlin more common sense. He wants to call Merlin a lovable idiot and remind his friend that he’s dreaming, and has been for as long as he can remember. It’s instinctive, and the words are on the tip of his tongue, but the Merlin in his dream is fading, fading fast, and Arthur knows they don’t have much time. The darkness is returning, and it’s worse, so much worse than the fog. It hurts to think, hurts to dream, hurts to remember. She’s looking for him. He should have told Merlin. But he couldn’t remember why or what he should have said. Why can’t he remember?

_What do you remember?_

He remembers threats and taverns and missing children. He remembers a witch, and a sorceress, and many, many, ominously vague words about his destiny. And there’s Merlin, again, under a great oak tree with his smile and his ears. It’s the only thing he wants to remember. The thought doesn’t surprise him, as it once had.

_It all makes sense now. At least, I think it does._

Merlin, who is somehow in his dream and awake at the same time, tells him of the dragon’s magic, and how it has kept them apart for so long. Merlin explains that it was partially due to his own magic that Arthur has forgotten so much. The king winces when he thinks of every possible reason why his former servant lied to him.

The sins of the father.

Did Merlin fear the hangman’s noose under his reign as well as Uther’s? He wants to know, he has to know. He calls Merlin by his Druid name. “Emrys.” The word is easier to say that Arthur expects.

_Yes._

“You kept things from me.” What he means is “You hid who you were. I, who was your closest friend, didn’t know the most important thing about you.”

_Yes._

“Why?” Did Merlin fear him the way he feared Uther?

But Merlin, ever the pragmatist, crosses his arms. _Is now really the best time for this?_

It makes Arthur smile, and his fear is gone. “Idiot.”

_Prat._

Merlin tells him that he has to find a girl named Freya, that she is the key to finding where Arthur sleeps. Arthur knows where he is, can see it in his mind’s eye, but its name, like so many other memories, is shrouded in the darkness that looms over him. He can feel Merlin’s excitement as the other man works out the magic’s mysteries; it surges through his veins like wildfire. Merlin’s excitement becomes his own. Soon, Arthur will awaken, and he can right the wrongs of the Pendragons against magic.

And then Merlin is gone, ripped from Arthur’s dream like the arrow shaft he’d once pulled from his leg. The arrow had hurt less, Arthur thinks.

The darkness surrounds him now, thick and suffocating. He can feel her, and her words whisper through the black, biting at the very root of himself. _The sins of the father shall be reaped unto the son._ Over, and over, and over, it repeats and when he’s broken and crying for mercy, the Lady Vivienne reappears in his throne room.

It’s a memory Arthur knows, and though he knows what she will say, he fears the words unspoken now that he knows what they mean.

“I promise you this, Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther, the sins of the father shall be reaped unto the son.” Her words burn him with shame for the Purge, for Morgana, for Mordred, for Merlin.

“I am not my father,” Arthur says.

Her eyes flash gold and before him he sees the mangled bodies of Druid children. “Are you not responsible?” she asks. “Are you not a Pendragon? Did you not inherit your father’s name? Your father’s throne?”

Arthur thinks of Merlin, and of all the times his servant had to hide who he was, of all the great deeds he couldn’t take credit for. Arthur thinks of all the wrongs done by Uther that should be righted. “I am not my father,” he repeats with force. This time, he believes it.

Her glare feels like a whip’s flaying, and she says, “No, you are not, but the blood that Uther shed must be repaid. The oaths he swore must come to pass. Even you, Son of Uther, must understand what vengeance is.” She snaps her fingers. The darkness swallows him whole and Lady Vivienne breathes out another enchantment, and a mist, green as the gem she sports on her brow, which smells as foul as it looks, swirls about her, its tendrils interlocking like chains at her wrists and feet. Her eyes flash the same green as the spell takes its hold. "It is done," she proclaims, "Your Emrys cannot save you now, for I have bound myself to your fate, Arthur Pendragon. The crown that should have been mine, the crown Uther promised me, shall now be Morgana's. And never shall I rest until I see it done."

She disappears in the mist, and Arthur wonders if she, too, is dreaming.

Merlin? Where is Merlin?

Through eyes that are not his own, he sees a lake, clear and sparkling as diamonds in sunlight. In his gut, he feels the echoes of past grief, past despair, past heartbreak felt at the water’s edge. This, then, is where Merlin had said goodbye to him.

Then darkness swallows him once more, and he knows two things.

Vivienne is awake.

Vivienne has found him.


	10. The Battle

Merlin stumbled toward the lake, nearly drunk in his joy. Of course Arthur was here. The nightmare Merlin had suffered from for decades was not a dream, but a memory— _Of course Arthur was in a boat, that day I said goodbye,_ Merlin chuckled at his own magic-induced blindness. _Why wouldn’t he be? He was in a boat, not in some hallucinated fog or on land, but on water. A boat floating on the lake of Avalon._

There was still something missing, but Merlin couldn’t quite place his finger on it. “Maybe this is enough?” he muttered the question to himself as his feet found their way into the shallows of the ancient water. The lake lapped up against his legs, cool, its energy revitalizing his skin even through the thick jeans he wore. It had been an age since he last remembered the shining, magic lake, but it felt as though it were yesterday that Merlin had said goodbye to Freya, to Elyan, to Excalibur...to his king. This was the resting place of the dragon-fire sword, and the home of the Sidhe.

He leaned down and whispered in the Druid tongue, calling to the spirits within the lake. His eyes glowed, and he felt Arthur's surprise through their newly discovered bond. "Can you feel that?" he wondered. "Can you feel my magic? I won't hide it any longer, I promise you that, Arthur Pendragon. No more secrets."

His power flowed out onto the water, shimmering like starlight across the calm surface. He waited to see the mystical hand emerged from the center of the lake, or to see Freya's face in the water. Instead, darkness crowded his eyes, and he choked on his own breath. Arthur was gone, the tenuous connection severed abruptly. Only an echo remained.

_The sins of the father. The sins of the father. The sins of the father._

“Arthur?” he called, pressing his hands against his eyes, against the sudden pain. His temples twinged and throbbed with the unexpected emptiness. Like the arrow that had pierced him the night he and Finna had run for their lives, the words that reflected back were swift and sharp. _The sins of the father. Sin. Sin. Sin._ “Arthur?”

But there was no reply. It was like Arthur had never been there at all. “Arthur!” Merlin keened, falling into the water. The slow waves tickled his wrists as his hands dug into the soft sand, an unreliable anchor. The pliant grains sang a primordial song, and there was a time when he would have listened in fascination.

“No!” he beat his hands against the water, the splash adding to the unbidden tears on his cheeks. “No, not again! I was so close! Why, gods? Why?” he punched the sand again, feeling childish even in his grief. “I did not imagine it,” he told himself. “I didn’t. I didn’t!”

The breath went out of him in defeat, and he looked over the water. How long he knelt there, he didn’t know. But the rain stopped, and the tears dried on his pale cheeks while his clothing soaked up more and more of the lake. He looked down at his drenched denim and remembered the last time he knelt, in the memory that wasn’t his, on the unforgiving cobblestones of Camelot.

“Merlin,” came the murmur on the wind.

It had been so long since he heard her soft sighs that, for a moment, he failed to recall that he had hailed the Lady of the Lake from the depths. But her voice came again, stronger this time, and then he felt a hand upon his cheek.

He turned, and saw Freya. It was not Freya as he knew her in life, but the shade of what remained. The magic of the lake had preserved her spirit, and though her skin was more pale than the first tendrils of dawn, she appeared in the body he remembered. Her skin was ice against his, but he welcomed it. _Freya_ , he thought, because he could not say it aloud. His throat was thick with holding back unshed tears. _Freya, help me._

Her thumb stroked his cheek, and she smiled. "Merlin, you cannot rest. There is much to be done."

"I..." he struggled. "I need your help. I can't feel him anymore. He was there, and then..."

"Shh, shh," Freya replied, her tone gentle. He thought for a moment that if things had been different, if she had never been cursed to live as a Bastet, she might have been a wonderful mother. Her touch, though cold, was the most comforting thing he had felt in eons, and he wanted nothing more than to curl up in her arms and let her soothe his suffering. "You are distracted, Emrys. Can you not feel the magic that is here?"

He made himself drag his eyes away from her dark hair and forlorn expression. He let himself think about the magic he had felt when he had first been led to the lake. Was it moments ago, or years? He detected the power now, faint from use but still forceful, the shriveled witchcraft that he recognized but would never understand. It was older than the great dragon, older than the magic Morgana used as a High Priestess. It was the magic of the priests of the grove, the foregone. It was the magic that Lady Vivienne had taken as her own.

With Freya's ghostly hand on him, he saw what he had not wanted to see. Traces of Vivienne's black sorcery scattered the shoreline. Through Freya, he sensed Vivienne’s anger and frustration. The enchantress had cast various spells, searching for a way to break through Kilgharrah’s weakening protections.

He looked back at Freya. “Is she still here?”

“She searches for the king.”

"I know. I saw her at Glastonbury Abbey yesterday. I tried to follow her, but...she disappeared as though she'd never been there at all."

"She is swift. Cunning. Had you forgotten?"

"No, no." Merlin's hand joined Freya's. He pulled it away from his face and intertwined their fingers. He could nearly see his own hand through her phantom skin. Although his palm and fingers were dirty, hers remained lily white. "I could never forget Vivienne, not in a million years. But I thought she was dead. I never imagined there was anyone else, stuck like me—"

"There's no time for that now, Emrys," Freya's cold grip tightened. "Your moment is here. Will you protect your king?"

"Of course I will. I would do anything for Arthur," he said. "But..." He glanced out over the lake, across the water, and saw nothing but the sky calmly mirrored. "Where do I find him? Last I remember, he was in a boat. I don't see a boat, or anything at all. He's not at the bottom of the lake, is he?" Dread crowded Merlin's chest at the thought of Arthur imprisoned in a watery grave.

"You still do not see? Merlin, please, try harder to remember! Time is running out," she urged.

"Remember what? There can’t possibly be more," he said, although he knew she was right. There was something else, something nagging in the back of his mind, like a forgotten item that never made it onto a grocery list.

"You know there is. Do not let the darkness shroud you any longer. You have come so far. Arthur needs you. If you don't remember, he will die."

Merlin wanted to lash out. To tell her that for a thousand years he'd been trying to find Arthur, and that in the last few days he'd gotten more signs than he knew what to do with. That he'd never been so excited, overwhelmed, or scared in his life. But she watched him with those deep brown eyes, the strangest mixture of melancholy and hope. So instead, he closed his eyes and prayed. To every god he'd ever known, to the Triple Goddess, to the memory of Kilgharrah and Gaius and Gwen, to Arthur himself. “Freya,” he whispered, “I cannot feel him anymore. I have lost him.”

Freya's forehead pressed against his, a ghostly kiss. "Remember," she said. “Listen for him.”

Merlin opened every sense to the universe, and gasped when he heard the cries of someone who was not used to tears. "Arthur! I'm here!" he wanted to shout, but his lips were frozen together. This dream was not like the others. He saw nothing but blackness, even less than a memory. But he felt Arthur's intense fear, and heard the voice of the witch.

"I promise you this, Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther, the sins of the father shall be reaped unto the son.”

Merlin sensed Arthur grasping for an answer, any answer. The words finally emerged from the gloom. "I am not my father."

Vivienne spat poisonous words and fire and rage at the king. Merlin tried to see more, but had never been so blind. Only Freya's cool touch kept him from losing himself in the king's nightmare.

Then came the mist. Merlin saw the green, rotten threads of Vivienne's power, pulsing like live wires in the eternal blackness. "Your Emrys cannot save you now, for I have bound myself to your fate, Arthur Pendragon," she said as the murk crept toward him, becoming thicker and thicker. "And never shall I rest until I see it done."

Despair, both his and Arthur’s swallowed him. _Vivienne tied herself to Arthur’s life force, not knowing that we had other plans for her enchantment!_

And as suddenly as it had disappeared, the bond returned. _Vivienne is awake, Merlin_ , said Arthur. _Have you come to take me home? Where were you?_

Merlin’s eyes shot open. Freya was gone. No mark was left on the wet sand to show she’d been there at all. But in her place lay the lustrous sword Excalibur, as bright as the day he’d seen it forged. He reached with reverent hands, and saved it from the shallows. Ripping his hoodie off, he wiped down the blade as he had a million times for Arthur. It glistened in the newly emerged sunlight, and he knew what he had to do.

 _Vivienne has found me._ The voice was louder now, as though spoken in his ear. He turned, and looked at the lake. _Can you see me, Merlin? Please tell me you can. I feel her. She is here, at Avalon._

The isle of Avalon lay in the middle of the lake, and Merlin found himself doubled over with laughter. Where a moment before there had been nothing but ripples, he saw the island where Kilgharrah had laid the king to rest in peace, and dream until the time to wake had come. Until Albion had need of him. There was even a long boat lying just offshore, a golden sail curling and dancing in the breeze. Holding the sword tightly, Merlin waded to the boat and climbed in. With a muttered spell, it began to move toward the island. “I’m coming for you, Arthur. Do you feel it?”

_Yes, Emrys._

Merlin wondered for a moment how Vivienne had reached the island. There was no doubt now that she had succeeded; when the isle appeared, so did the other traces of her abominable magic. Black and green remnants of old spells soured the waves beneath the vessel, swirling like oil in the waves, soiling the sacred water.

“Don’t worry about that now,” he scolded himself. “Deal with her first.”

The boat approached the island more quickly than he anticipated—the hull dug into the soft sand of the shore before he had even formulated a plan, or remembered what spells to use against her kind. _Too late now_ , he thought, opening his mind as much as he could to the connection with Arthur. No words came through, but the sense of apprehension was fierce.

Merlin had never been on the isle before, but he listened for Arthur’s heartbeat, and followed. There was a moment when he thought there was more than mere pumping. _Mer-lin. Mer-lin_ , it seemed to say, calling to him. He crept through the green undergrowth, past trees he could not name and flowers that no doubt possessed as much magic as he did. The air itself was full of life, the kind of life that came from the stories humans had set aside as myth. He felt so out of place in the ancient greenwood, with his trainers and the mobile phone in his pocket. He stepped carefully, wary of any traps Vivienne might have set, but found nothing. _She must not know I’m here_ , he thought.

He finally came to a clearing. Approaching softly, he stepped out of the safety of the woods and into the exposed space. It was a wide glen, as large as the grounds of Camelot. And in the center was the altar from his dream, the first he had had after finding the black crystal. But the body that lay upon it was obstructed from view by the looming figure of Vivienne.

She paced around the altar, shedding her modern clothes as she went. Merlin thought he saw her lips moving, but he felt no magic until she was as naked as the day she was born, her hair cascading over her breasts. Green smoke swirled around her and suddenly she was clad in long black robes. They moved with her, as though they were an extension of her body.

As he took his second step into the clearing, moving on sheer determination to reach that heartbeat, her voice rang out like one of the bells in Camelot’s watch tower. “I’ve been expecting you, Emrys.”

Merlin kept on with his steady steps, one foot after the other, fighting the preyful instinct to dart and run. “I’m sorry that I can’t say the same about you, my lady,” he raised his voice to be heard across the field.

Vivienne turned away, placing her hands on the altar. Though he couldn’t see them, he imagined her hands were curled like claws ready to strike. “I’m sure you can imagine how displeased I was to realise that you and that decrepit excuse for a dragon had thwarted my daughter. Had thwarted me.”

“We can’t always get what we want,” said Merlin, emboldened by the surge of warmth Excalibur radiated at the mention of Kilgharrah. His eyes moved from analyzing the stiff set of her shoulders to the knight on the altar. He could just make out Arthur’s face, and felt a rush of gladness at not having the barrier of a helm between them. The king’s hair moved slightly in the breeze, and Merlin wondered how it was that Arthur wasn’t covered in cobwebs or engulfed in long blond locks. No sign of a beard either. _That answers that question._

_She was talking to me. She knows things I never told anyone._

Merlin tried to quicken his steps without being too obvious.

“No, I suppose we cannot,” she said. “Still, seeing my beloved Morgana dead at unworthy hands, and the kingdom passed to that servant who dared call herself a queen...you cannot imagine my grief.”

“I’ve had my fair share of grief,” he countered, still measuring out his footfalls. He thought of the tactics he had learned from the knights of Camelot, and knew that she was expecting one of two things from him—flight or fight. He didn’t think he wanted to oblige. He was the last Dragon Lord, and would protect his king, the man he loved above all others. He would not throw this chance away with a sudden, foolish attack, nor by turning his back.

She chuckled, moving back around the altar so that Arthur lay between them. “You know nothing yet of grief. Arthur Pendragon owes a blood debt to me. To all those who use magic. I am going to finish what I set out to do more than a thousand years ago, when Uther chose the wrong path. I hadn’t planned on doing the deed myself, as you will recall. I rather dislike messiness. But Arthur is going to die, Emrys...and I’m going to make you watch, before I kill you, too.”

Instead of inflaming him with fear, as Merlin knew her words were meant to do, the threat stirred his blood, and he was no longer the lonely man out of time. He was the greatest sorcerer the world had ever known, _Myrddin Emrys_ , who had sent armies quaking at the battle of Camlann, who controlled the skies and the earth. A smile found its way to his lips, and Excalibur was at the ready.

“What does that gain you, my lady?” His tone was scornful. “Your daughters are dead. We are strangers in this world. There is no Camelot, no druids left, no magic in the land. There is nothing to rule or be ruled. Give up this dream of killing an innocent man because you were spurned.”

Her ruby lips fell open in surprise and anger. “This is so much more than what Uther did to me, Emrys! He killed our kind, massacred them in their beds and burned them alive. He would have done the same to me, the mother of his only daughter, given the chance,” she spat, her eyes glowing with rage. “Uther’s blood called to me when I awoke from that pesky, unexpected slumber, and led me here. That blood is evil, Emrys, and it runs in your precious lover’s veins. If he knew what you were, he would strike you down himself!”

 _Never!_ shouted Arthur through the bond, livid and indignant.

“Somehow I doubt that. You see, Arthur was not his father.”

“He was always saying that. Did he give you a script to follow when you turned your back on your kind, and became a betrayer? If Morgana had been queen, she would have made you suffer for ignoring our people.”

Merlin was close enough now to see her beautiful skin, the small features that were so much like her daughters'. He saw Morgause and Morgana in the curve of her lips and the bridge of her nose. He realised that he didn’t care. That was all behind him—only Arthur mattered now. “But Morgana was never queen. Guinevere was. Because Arthur knew what he was doing when he married her, when he left the throne to her. Because she was fair, and kind, and accepting. If you had been awake to see it—”

“But I wasn’t, was I?” Vivienne suddenly reminded Merlin of a serpent, coiling, ready to bite. “I wasn’t awake; I was asleep because you decided you knew better. You, a lowly little hedge wizard who cleaned boots and emptied chamber pots, thought you knew better than I! I never meant to bind myself to Arthur this way, but I’m glad it happened. Now I can kill you myself for what you’ve done!”

 _You’re in range_ , said Arthur, his voice remarkably calm, and Merlin realised he was right. The decision to swing the sword was simple. His body remembered the technique as though it were yesterday that he lived in Camelot, surrounded by the finest knights in Albion. But Vivienne was quick, and with a thrust of her hand his attack was parried, and he was cast back on to the grass. He scrambled to his feet, clutching Excalibur like a lifeline.

“So eager to meet your end, aren’t you,” she said. The scent of blood filled the air, and Merlin thought about the dream, the forest littered with the aftermath of a battle. Where was the smell coming from? A spell had barely formed on his lips when she flicked her wrist at him again, anticipating his move. He flew backward, hitting the ground even harder this time, the breath forced out of him. The sword was knocked from his hand, and he summoned it with a quick glance. Armed again, he tried to catch his breath, and realised that he was horribly, woefully out of practice.

Vivienne watched him with bright, eager eyes. She laughed, and and raised her arms and her face to the clear sky. Her mouth was open and a terrible sound emerged. Green smoke spilled from her lips, and something slithered out with it. Merlin backed up a few steps, swinging Excalibur forward. The smoke moved down her body, and crept onto the ground where it grew. Emerald and crimson flames curled around the smoke, and Merlin realised what the thing was. A dark green spell-woven dragon, so dark it was nearly black, emerged from the fog; it swerved its huge head toward him and bared its teeth. More smoke spilled from between its lips, and the smell of a newly lit fire mixed with the smell of blood.

The sorceress laughed again, looking down at Arthur's immobile form. "Let my pet keep you busy, Merlin. I will be with you shortly." She waved a hand over Arthur, and Merlin felt her intent clearly though the bond. A remnant of Kilgharrah's spell surrounded the king, and she was probing for a weak spot. When her fingers got too close to him, sparks flew. She snatched her hand away, but began a low, melodious muttering that sounded almost like music.

Merlin whirled to face the gigantic spell-dragon. Where two eyes should have been, there were four, all of them watching Excalibur. The beast dug its claws into the ground and growled, expelling more smoke. The exhaust was pungent, stinging Merlin’s eyes and throat. He took a step forward and spoke on instinct alone. “Draca! Nun de ge dei s'eikein kai emois epe'essin hepesthai! Weas!” The last time he had said those words, Morgana’s Aithusa had quivered in fear before obeying his every command. But this dragon was false, an abomination born of hatred. The old incantation did nothing, and the creature opened its mouth to show Merlin the deadly flames in its belly.

He dove out of the way just in time to avoid being scorched. If Kilgharrah had struck him with his fire, he would have stood his ground and let the magic of the Dragon Lord protect him. But this was otherworldly—the second he saw the fire, he knew that if it touched his skin, it would melt the flesh from his bones like phosphorous. He would sink into the ground and be as forgotten as the magic that had once ruled the world.

He rolled onto his feet, and tried speaking to the spell-dragon again. He doubted now that it would have any effect, but he had to be certain. "O drakon," he cried, "E male so ftengometta tesd'hup'anankes!"

The monster, easily three times the size of the sorcerer, turned its surprisingly deft body toward Merlin, this time with only two of its eyes watching the sword. The others focused on him, and narrowed. Its lips curled up in a grotesque grin, black and green steam oozing from its mouth, its ears, and even from between its scales. Merlin hesitated. From what he had studied, many lesser dragons could not speak, or portray emotions the way the Great Dragon had. This concoction was even less than they, and yet...it smiled. He snuck a glance at Vivienne, and saw that she, too, was smiling. His heart hammered wildly as the realization sunk in.

Vivienne stopped her chanting for a moment. "Trying to control him won't work, Emrys. I know you fancy yourself to be a Dragon Lord, but really. I expected a little more from you," she said with relish in her voice as Merlin dashed around the creature, dodging spitfire after spitfire, and on occasion, the dragon’s long lashing tail.

His feet knew the dance of the close-combat knight better than his mind did, and although he was out of breath, he remained unhurt. If he had had time to think, he would have told Arthur that he wasn't so useless when it came to fighting after all. But there was no time, barely seconds to inhale small gasps that weren't poisoned by the smoke, and even less time to elude the creature that was half-death, half-Vivienne. The presence of Excalibur seemed to anger the spell-dragon more than Merlin's dextrous sidesteps and evasions. It kept at least one eye on it, no matter Merlin's positioning. Whenever the sword caught the sunlight, the creature growled in frustration. It knew, on some level that Vivienne did not, that the blade could kill anything—even what was already dead. It must have been a dragon once, long ago, or at least part of it had been. It sensed Kilgharrah’s fire, and was afraid.

Panic seeped through the bond, and Merlin's right trainer nearly caught ablaze when he didn’t move fast enough. _It's so dark_ , whispered Arthur. _No way out_.  

 _Hold on_ , Merlin thought. _Just hold on. A little bit longer._

Vivienne must have been pouring more of her power into her assault on Kilgharrah’s last barrier than she realised, because as Merlin tired, so did the spell-dragon. It began to move more slowly, confirming his suspicions that it was not solely woven of black magic. A true wraith would have been inexhaustible, but the fire came less frequently now, and one eye was having trouble staying open. And when it wheezed more in anguish than in anger, Merlin struck.

“Gehæftan!” he bellowed, at the same time that Vivienne chuckled darkly, “I have you now, King of Camelot.”

Roots as large as pythons burst out of the grass, sending dirt flying into the air. They wove themselves around the spell-dragon, and the abomination roared as it was pulled to the ground, smoke billowing in its wake. The earth shuddered when the creature fell, the roots tight around its legs and wings. One last tuber wrapped around its snout, cutting off the venomous flames.

Merlin’s eyes locked with Vivienne’s over the wriggling spell-dragon and Arthur’s body. A mad grin crept onto her face, and she licked her lips. “It is too late, Emrys. Say farewell, this time for the last time.” She drew a long silver dagger from within her voluminous sleeve. It glinted green in the sun as she hovered it over Arthur’s chest, her eyes shining with victory. “This is for Morgause and Morgana. For the sins of Uther, and for what never should have been!”

 _Mer-lin. Mer-lin_ , said the heartbeat. _Em-rys._

 _Together, Merlin,_ said Arthur. _Swing your sword._

“Argh!” roared Merlin, roared Emrys, as loud as any true dragon. He swung Excalibur up, and into the heart of the creature. The blade slid in easily through the smoke and scales, finding purchase further in, crunching through old bones that should have been long buried. Merlin drove it in to the hilt, ignoring the stinging smoke and the tears that streamed down his face. With a final twist of his wrist, the false body detonated, sending plumes of exhaust spiraling upward and upward. Excalibur fell to Merlin’s side, and with nothing left to hold, the roots retreated underground.

Gasping for clean air, Merlin nearly collapsed. It was Emrys who kept him standing up, who kept his back straight and tall as he watched Vivienne. She had dropped the dagger, and was clutching at her chest. Her hair was turning grey and then white, strand by strand. Her skin was saggy and sallow. She cried as she looked at her once beautiful hands, now crooked, thin, and warped with a thousand years of age. “No,” she wailed. The sound was cut off by a choking gurgle. Blood bubbled from her lips, green and red and black like the dragon that was somehow part of her, and she fell, out of sight behind the altar.

Merlin raced toward her. She lay sprawled like a broken doll, blood covering her hands and her throat. She glared at him, her eyes so white with cataracts that he wondered how much she could actually see. “Ven-ven-vengeance,” she rasped, her once melodic voice stripped of its court-like charm. “Vengeance was mine. What ha-have you done?”

Merlin thrust the sword into the ground at his feet. It quivered with energy, as though it had done more than kill a spectre. “Together,” Arthur had said. Merlin looked at her prostrate form, shriveling before his eyes, and he knew Arthur had done something, too.

“You won’t even put me out of my misery?” the thing that had been the powerful Lady Vivienne croaked when he did not answer, her eyes receding back into her skull. She gasped and clutched at what was left of her stomach with her bony fingers.

He sighed. “I don’t think I need to.”

She closed her eyes and shuddered. Her skin pulled tight against her bones until she looked more like a skeleton than a woman. A last dribble of blood and spit leaked from the corner of her mouth. A foul stench filled the air, and her eyes reopened: black, empty, and dead.

The moment her soul departed for whatever hell it had earned, Merlin felt a tingling at the tips of his fingers and the bottom of his feet. The prickling moved like lightning to settle in his chest, and he felt her magic leave the world. Its abrupt absence left him nearly dizzy as the natural forces around him tried to compensate for the unexpected dearth of power. He shook off the vertigo.

“Bæl on bryne,” Merlin’s eyes glowed. The corpse, drowning in diaphanous robes, caught fire. It burned faster than anything Merlin had ever seen, leaving a fine thin ash behind. Some of it blew away in the breeze right then, and he knew all remnants of her would be gone by the end of the day.

Wiping a hand over his brow, Merlin walked across the ashes to look down at what he had waited decades to see. Arthur's face was peaceful, his eyelids still. He picked up the dagger that had fallen from Vivienne's ill-intended grasp, and threw it behind him. If it made a sound when it landed, he didn't notice. Every sense was directed toward the man who slept before him. He could hear the steady, calm breathing, see the rise and fall of his chest. He reached out and felt the smooth armour that encased the king, as shiny as it had been the day he had fallen asleep. Not a speck of rust tarnished the metal, and Merlin wondered if time worked differently on Avalon.

He watched the body, and he waited. The light wind continued to ruffle Arthur's hair gently, and Merlin wished it were his fingers running through it instead. _Now is as good a time as any_ , he thought. Hesitantly, he touched the locks that Arthur had kept short, as befitted a knight of the realm. It was soft under his fingers, and for a moment he felt a surge of envy for Gwen, who had been able to touch Arthur whenever she liked. Merlin had often seen her stroke Arthur's hair in the privacy of their chambers; as they sat at dinner alone together, or as they got dressed in the morning. Merlin had always felt uncomfortable when she did that, or when she kissed her husband in his presence. Arthur had teased him about it, saying that his ears turned the color of tomatoes and that he needed to find a girl the next time he visited the tavern. _But it isn't a tavern wench I want_ , Merlin had longed to explain. _It's you. The one thing I can never have._

But maybe now things would be different. The world had changed in so many ways. Merlin let the hair slip through his fingers a second longer before he pulled away, and tried to refocus. "What do I do now?" he asked the dreaming king. "When Kilgharrah and I altered the curse, we didn't know how to break it."

 _I don't want to dream anymore_ , said Arthur. _I'm tired of dreaming._

"I know," said Merlin. And he did. He could feel Arthur's restlessness and itch to move.

Maybe the answer was as simple as using magic. Kilgharrah had said that the king would awake when Albion needed him...but how? Merlin reached down into the part of himself where the magic lived, the part of himself that he would no longer hide. "Deffro!" _Awaken, Arthur Pendragon._

But nothing happened. He tried again, holding onto the magical command as long as he could. The aura around Arthur shimmered faintly, but he did not move. Not even his breath changed, his pulse still slow and steady.

Tears sprung to Merlin's eyes again, and he knelt beside the altar. He clasped his hands together to keep them from shaking, like a child at prayer. He had come so far in such a short amount of time...but what good was it if he couldn't wake Arthur? _Idiot_ , Merlin grit his teeth together, angry with himself for even thinking that. _I will stay with you. I will protect you, even if you never wake up. Another thousand years. So be it._

His forehead rested against the cool stone of the altar, and he wished that his tears were magical too, like in that fairy tale. Rapunzel had it easy—all she had to do was cry over her prince, and his eyesight was miraculously restored. If only Arthur...

"Wait..." Merlin muttered, raising his head. He stood up, ignoring the dust and grass and ashes on his jeans. He leaned over Arthur. "What if it is that easy?" he asked. He remembered the fairy tale he was loathe to hear, the one that made his heart clench with sorrow every time he heard it.

Merlin looked down at his king, the person with whom his destiny had been entwined since before they were born, since the beginning of magic. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves. What he was about to do had been forbidden in the world he had known, in the kingdom Arthur had ruled. But those rules no longer applied. _Besides_ , he thought with a small smile, _I've been breaking the rules since the day I entered the gates of Camelot._

He leaned down, his face hovering over Arthur's, their breath mingling. He closed the gap, pressing a soft kiss against Arthur's motionless mouth. His lips were soft, softer than Merlin had ever let himself imagine. He pulled away, sad to lose the intimate connection, however brief. He held his breath, watching Arthur's eyelids and counting his heartbeats.

For a torturous moment, Arthur was still. Then the heartbeat was quicker, quicker, and his eyes moved beneath his eyelids. Merlin grasped at Arthur's gauntlet clad hand, ignoring the cold, uncomfortable press of the metal against his skin.

Arthur opened his eyes.


	11. Awakening

The darkness has overtaken him. Arthur can scarcely feel Merlin anymore, no more than he can feel his own body. He's somewhere between awake and asleep, and he no longer knows if he's dreaming. It's dark, so dark, and it feels like hatred, like the cold pools of Vivienne's vengeance had risen up to wash what's left of him away. Vivienne is coming for him.

Merlin? Are you there? Are you real?

But Merlin doesn't answer. The space that had been Merlin is a void, and Arthur doesn't want to explore its depth, afraid that it may be forever. He had never said goodbye to Merlin, and he isn't going to begin now.

He runs from the darkness, the overpowering black of oblivion, and hides in a memory of Agnes, who was the closest thing to a mother he ever knew. He remembers the lullabies she sang to him, sang in a language that sounded like raindrops on leaves in the springtime. She spoke curses that sounded like thunder the day Uther had burned her at the stake for witchcraft.

The sins of the father.

He is not his father, but that doesn't stop him from wondering if he could have saved Agnes. Morgana. Mordred. He realises now that his destiny is circular, that no matter the choices the Disir had given him, he would have ended up here. It was not his choice alone that led him to Camlann, to that fateful day on that field near Avalon. His feet had been set on this path since his birth, when his mother had drawn her final breath and Uther had sworn vengeance on all magic. On Merlin. He sees his destiny as a river, and no matter where the river begins, or what twists and turns it may take, it must always find release in the sea. So too was he always meant to meet Mordred’s blade in Camlann, to be cursed in this deathlike sleep by Vivienne, to be saved once more by Merlin. Destiny is shaped by more than magic.

Merlin. Has he found his way to Avalon? Does he know where Arthur sleeps? The king wants to reach out, to feel that connection they’d shared, however brief, but Arthur feels the gap Merlin’s left behind like an open wound. Does Merlin know that Vivienne is coming?

He hides in the memory of Agnes’s death, in the smoke of her execution. It happened in the early days after the Great Purge, before Uther had discovered it took a dozen men to sweep away the ashes of crumbled sorcerers and only one to carry away a headless body. His father had made him watch Agnes die. He hadn’t yet reached his third nameday. He stands beside Uther now, not as a child but as a man, and his father says as they watch the flames’ punishing dance, “Never forget, Arthur, that she is the reason you don’t have a mother.”

“No,” Arthur says.

He can feel Vivienne’s approach, stirring like the beginnings of a winter’s storm. “No,” he tells the shade of his father again. “It was not Agnes’ fault. Nor Morgana’s. Nor Mordred’s. Nor Merlin’s. Magic is not to blame for the choices you made.” He remembers the words of Nimueh, and the shade of his mother. It was not a lie, he knows now; his very existence has always been because of magic.

"She's coming, Father," he tells the image of Uther, "Vivienne. The woman you betrayed." He imagines that if this were really his father, that he might see a flicker of regret in the former king's face. But this is not his father, this is the hollow specter of Uther's presence, a mere shadow of the man that had shaped Arthur's life. This image is devoid of the softer parts of Uther Pendragon, and the man who once wept for loss of Morgana is gone, dead and buried in a sepulcher of stone and memory.

"Vivienne is not a woman," says Uther. His voice is hard and filled with rage. "She is a monster—a venomous viper who will strike you down and destroy all that we've built."

Not all magic is like that of Vivienne. Not all magic is evil.

"Magic will destroy Camelot. It is the poison that lives in the blood--you must destroy it before it destroys Camelot. Before it destroys you."

Merlin. Merlin is magic. Merlin is not evil.

"Would you throw away the Pendragon legacy for a servant?" taunts Uther. "Would he be worth it? Would you betray your own father? Your kin?"

"We are of the same blood," says Arthur, "But I do not believe in your vengeance as I once did. And I cannot undo all that you have done, Father, but I can set things right. Merlin deserves better."

The former king roars and lashes out against Arthur. It is not the elegant restrained techniques that his father had taught him to use on the battlefield; Uther fights as if he were a caged animal, clawing, tearing, ripping his way into Arthur's flesh. This is not the Uther he wants to remember. The former king is frantic in his anger, and his eyes are a pale sickly hue of green that burns Arthur when he looks at Uther. This is not his father.

Vivienne. This is Vivienne's doing. This is Uther as Vivienne remembers him.

The sickly green bleeds out of Uther's eyes and into his skin, melting flesh from bone and disintegrating the form of the Camelot's prior king into something truly terrifying: a creature that looks like a giant boar but with fangs the size of Excalibur. Arthur wants to retch as he watches his father dissolve into something less than human. This is not his father, this monster formed from Uther's body. This is a nightmare, and Arthur begs, pleads, cries out for Merlin, but Merlin cannot answer.

So Arthur runs, and the boar chases him. He races through the dark, and the long reach of the sorceress's hatred seeks to trap him, to steal his balance and leave him as fodder for the monster's savage maw. The cold rush of fear drenches him and he hopes that Merlin knows that Vivienne is awake, that Vivienne has found him. It's so dark, and Arthur cannot hope for escape when Vivienne is dreaming for him. When Merlin was near, Arthur wandered through this dream world where he will. The voice that was Merlin is gone, ripped from him, and Arthur feels Merlin's absence acutely now that Vivienne controls the dream, like a starved man with only the memory of bread to nourish him.

He runs until his lungs burn for breath and he collapses under the weight of the darkness. He doesn't know if this is still a dream, or if what he sees is true, but he knows that if he stops, if the boar pierces him with its fangs, he will perish and he will lose all chance of seeing Merlin again. The thought has him on his feet again and running blindly, the roars of the monster close at his heels.

 _Arthur Pendragon_ , a female voice flutters in the corners of his mind, soft but urgent. _Arthur Pendragon, do not let the darkness shroud you any longer. You have come so far_. The voice becomes a light, and he rushes toward it. He sees a cave, and he escapes into it. The boar crashes behind him, a landslide of anger and vengeance, but its behemoth fury is its downfall and it is crushed in the cave's entrance.

Arthur is trapped. The light is gone, and while he can still feel Vivienne's presence, she cannot reach him here.  The cave is safe. He knows this because it feels like Merlin, like the very walls in the dream were carved by his servant's hands. "Merlin," he whispers, "Can you hear me?" But there is no answer.

The darkness cloaks, and the king struggles to remember. He can feel it slipping away, everything he knows. That Morgana is his sister. That Vivienne seeks vengeance against his father. That he did not slay a dragon. That Merlin is a sorcerer and a Dragon Lord. The memories are there and gone in an instant, like breathfuls of air, and he grasps at them as they slip away.

Merlin.

He clings to a memory of Merlin smiling under an eastward-moving sun, clings to it like it's his final breath. Maybe it is.

He remembers his last breath, and there it is: the one memory that he doesn't want to keep and he cannot escape. He remembers Camlann.

It had been a long night. Guinevere was asleep, a constant and faithful presence in his arms. Sleep was not so kind to him, and when he did sleep, he dreamt of Merlin's voice in his head warning him of Morgana's imminent attack. _Find the path or the battle will be over before it's begun._

Yes, Merlin.

The light flickers back, just a candle's worth in this vast and empty cave. It leads him through his memory of that fateful day, and he knows that it is time to remember.

The battle is not so important to him as it once might have been. When he walked and talked and breathed, he lived and died by the sword. He wishes now that he had paid more attention to the tall and formidable figure on the cliff's edge. He wishes now that he had realised it was Merlin. It scares him, how much power Merlin could command in a few words. How easy it was for him to scatter the Saxon army, how simply he dismissed a dragon. This, this is the magic that Uther feared would destroy his kingdom. Arthur fears it, but it is a different fear from Uther's. He fears it as one would the sea or a winter storm. He remembers being grateful to the unknown sorcerer, grateful that he wasn't the recipient of such magnificent and consuming power.

When Mordred had slid the blade into his belly, Arthur had wondered what the sorcerer would think of it--his magic had saved the kingdom, but the king was dead by the blade of a man Camelot had once called "friend."

He can't forget the crack in Merlin's voice when the servant admitted that he couldn't defy the prophecy, that Mordred had been destined to send Arthur into this age-long sleep. In all the time he's been asleep, Arthur has never dreamt of Merlin saying those words. It is one memory he doesn't want, and he remembers why.

 _It was me._ Merlin's voice echoes in the dark of the cave.

"Don't be ridiculous, Merlin." That was what he had said. "Don't be ridiculous." As if Merlin were joking, as if Merlin's tears were foolish. But the look in Merlin's eyes showed none of his customary humorous sparkles, and the slippery eel of betrayal had slithered into Arthur's heart, taking root around it and whispering in broken rhythms of Merlin's lies. Merlin's deceit. Merlin's secrets.

Merlin's voice wraps around him, cocooning him. In any other memory, it would have been soothing. _I'm a sorcerer. I have magic and I use it for you. Only for you._ No, Merlin, stop. Not this memory. Not now. But the king knows that he can't send the memory, can't send Merlin, away. Not again. Not ever again. It was there, in the forest, under another oak tree much like the one Arthur thinks so often of, that he faced his worst moment: he sent Merlin away. Even if he's dreaming still and will never awaken, the hurt look in Merlin's eyes shames Arthur. He's glad to be alone in this cave because perhaps Vivienne was right, perhaps his rejection of Merlin makes him no better than Uther. Wronging Merlin is to wrong magic itself.

He sits alone for days, weeks, years. Time doesn't matter in the dark. The light flickers back and forth, as restless as Gwaine on the eve of battle. He wants to stomp it out, to smother it, but curiosity stays his hand. If the light goes out, he may never escape this prison in his mind. If he can never escape, he will never see Merlin again.

He remembers the oak tree. Merlin's smile. Merlin's ears.

The light comes towards him, and it grows and takes shape. It dances off the cave's walls, and Arthur notices that the cave is full of crystals. He reaches out and touches one, and in its reflection he sees Guinevere, his Queen. It is not the Guinevere he knew, however. She is older and plumper and happier than the girl he married. He wonders how he can see this if he is asleep, and by instinct he calls out for Merlin to explain it to him. Merlin does not answer, but the light spools into itself until an apparition of Gwen stands in front of him.

"Hello, Arthur," she says and he remembers the softness of her hands, the gentle swish of her skirts, and the way her hair reflected the moonlight when she slept next to him.

"Guinevere," he says. His hands hang by his side, heavy weights of indecision. Should he embrace her? Should he kiss her? Was she really his wife, or was this another of Vivienne's nightmares?

"Do you not know your own wife?" she asks him. Her eyes sparkle, the way they had whenever he complained about his useless manservant. He used to tell her that her eyes knew more than her words let on, that they were full of secrets.

"Guinevere," he says again. He presses her into his arms and imagines that it's real.  "Are you here? Are you real?"

"You are trapped, my king," she tells him. "Trapped and only you can save you. You must remember, Arthur. Your story is not finished. You must remember Emrys."

Emrys. He knows what she wants him to remember, but the memory is locked away, buried underneath spells and sorcery and enchantments. He does not want to remember the price he must pay, the blood debt that the Pendragons owe to magic. Vivienne's curse throbs in his veins, a never ending drum beat of his and his father's mistakes. He does not want to remember.

Guinevere looks at him with something like pity in her eyes. "The sins of the father do not defeat redemption for the son," she tells him. "You are not Uther. If you were, I would not have married you."

Redemption for the son. He does not know how  to respond to her. Instead, he holds her closer to him. "If I wake up, will you be there?"

She breaks their embrace and Arthur knows that she does indeed have secrets behind her twinkling eyes. “You weren’t supposed to love me,” says Guinevere, “But you made a habit of loving people you shouldn’t, didn’t you?”

He doesn't know what she means.

"Yes, you do," she says. "Some things are destined to happen; some people are destined to meet. You, Arthur, have had a destiny that's been written since the dawn of magic. Some things have always been and will always be. My destiny was to be your Queen, to take care of Camelot after you'd gone." She smiles at him. "I think you know who your destiny is. The world has changed since you've slept, Arthur. What was supposed to happen can happen now." She embraces him, and he knows it is for the last time. "It is time for you to remember, and to accept your destiny."

How is he supposed to remember?

"Believe, Arthur. Believe what your heart knows to be true. Believe in what has been and what always will be." The light unspools from inside of her, and encases his queen in its glow. "Goodbye, Arthur," she says.

Remember.

When she’s gone, Arthur looks back into the crystal where he had seen the queen’s face. She smiles up at him, and in her arms is a babe, red-faced and laughing. He doesn’t know if what he sees is true, but he hopes desperately that Guinevere had the chance to hear the laughter of her children ringing through the castle’s corridors. None were more deserving of happiness than she.

The light, now free from Guinevere, leaps to the top of the cave. He knows that if he heads toward the light, he will remember and Vivienne will likely find him. He also knows that if he reaches the light, he'll find Merlin. So he begins to climb toward the light, and as he does, he thinks of the shard of Mordred's sword edging its way into his heart. Merlin had carried him, at the end, when he no longer had the strength to stand. Merlin had fed him, cared for him, and had even warmed his boots. He had repaid his servant with disdain and distrust.

The memories are buried deep under shame and regret, and Arthur has a difficult time calling them forth. He supposes that when one has a shard of dragonblade embedded in their gut, they can be forgiven for not committing things clearly to memory. Merlin’s first admission of magic is clearest, and the two days that followed blur together in Arthur’s memory, a wheel of agony that never stops turning. The closer Arthur climbs to the light, the more he feels as if Mordred’s blade is still in him, tunneling through his chest to his heart. The pain, oh gods, the pain. The shard digs into him, and though he’d never told Merlin, when Mordred had stabbed him, he had whispered a curse in the king’s ear. “You will remember the wrongs you’ve done to magic,” Mordred had said, “You will see their faces until you draw your last breath.”

Arthur stops climbing and grips his chest where he imagines the shard would be. The closer it got to his heart, the more vivid their faces had become, the sorcerers who had died at Uther’s hand. At his. Agnes. Osgar. Mordred. Morgause. Morgana. There were more, so many more that he could not name. The one face he did not see in his mind’s eye was Merlin’s, and it is that face that causes him the most shame, but the servant sat across from him, spoon-feeding him and showing him kindness. In the end, it had been too much for Arthur to bear, and now he wants to stop remembering.

He can’t stop however. He’s come too far and remembered so much already.

The sins of the father.

Guinevere’s voice reaches him then, calm and steady as had been her love for him. _The sins of the father do not defeat redemption for the son._

Redemption. What redemption can there be for a king who killed magic in the name of vengeance? What redemption can there be for a man who rejected the most faithful friend he’d ever known? Why should Merlin redeem Arthur of his mistakes?

 _Our destiny_ , whispers Merlin’s voice from the corner of his dream. At least he thinks it’s Merlin’s voice. He isn’t sure anymore.

Destiny? He isn’t sure he believes in it, in spite of all that he’s learned in this dream. Why would so powerful a sorcerer serve such a mortal and weak man as he? Uther had made Arthur believe that all sorcerers wanted power, but Merlin had never been more than a servant to the king.

It buzzes under his skin, the feeling that Arthur has forgotten something important. Remember. Remember. Remember. He moves his right hand, then his left, and pushes himself up again towards the light. The pain in his chest is so intense now that it chokes him, and the king fights with his lungs for air as he moves higher, closer, sooner to Merlin. He loses his footing and slams into the cave’s wall. The cold stone knocks what little breath he had out of him. He can’t breathe, he’s clinging to rock, and he remembers the horrible things he said to Merlin in those final days before Avalon. Fragments and splinters of conversation wedge themselves into his mind, taught and blistering in misery. _Why did you never tell me? I thought I knew you. I trusted you. You’ve lied to me all this time. Why are you doing this?_

He reaches out for the memory of Merlin’s smile, but it’s out of reach. All of it, everything he’s remembered, is out of reach. Except one memory.

He remembers that last morning.

It was just before dawn, and the grass was as cold and dewy as the morning air. He remembers the curl of Merlin's hand around his waist, and the press of his servant's ribs against  his armour. Merlin had supported all his weight, there at the end, and Arthur knew the moment the outer ridges of his heart clamped in around the shard of dragonblade that he would go no further; he would never see Avalon. Mordred's curse weighed heavy on the dying king, but now he only saw Merlin. Merlin, the most faithful friend. Merlin, who had protected him no matter the cost to himself. Merlin, who was the best man he'd ever known.

What is the life of Arthur compared to the life of Merlin?

He remembers.

When he collapsed to the ground, and Merlin wept over him, he could think of only one last request to ask of his friend, one final chance to ask for something that he'd never been able to before. Uther had told him, once, that when Ygraine, his mother, lay in her deathbed, with Arthur as a babe clutched in her arms, her last request was for Uther to hold her, for her last moments to be spent being held by the man she loved. Uther had confessed to Arthur that lying there and feeling the last of her breath leaving her body was more difficult than any battle he'd ever fought. When Arthur had asked the same of Merlin, he had thought he was dying, and wasn't it strange that the prospect of death gave him more courage than he'd ever had with a sword in his hand?

He remembers the fruition of Mordred's curse, the moment before his last when he had opened his eyes and seen Merlin, had seen Emrys. He knew then, everything Merlin had done for Camelot, for him, and he remembers it again now. It weighs heavy on him, the insurmountable debt that he owes to his friend. He had thought often what his last words would be, as Mordred's blade niggled closer to his heart with every beat of his pulse, but when the time came he knew he didn't have enough breath to say everything that he wanted. He wanted to apologise, to tell Merlin that he was wrong, so wrong, but instead he chose the truth that Merlin needed to hear, a small step toward paying off his debt to Merlin: _I want to say something I've never said to you before: thank you._

When Arthur had closed his eyes that last time, his final thought had been of Merlin's eyes, and how blue they looked under the grey half-lit hours before dawn. He never said goodbye to Merlin.

And he never will.

He pulls himself up onto a ledge. He’s so close to the light, he can almost reach up and touch it. A few more feet and he will be there. He’s not sure what will happen when he reaches it, but expectation surges with his pulse, one thought, one memory, one word echoing in each heartbeat: Merlin. Merlin. Merlin. He reaches one hand up, and his fingertips barely graze the light.

Merlin's return to him is the breaking of a dam. A torrent of Merlin floods his mind—thoughts, memories, emotions—centuries of loneliness and waiting and...what is a "hoodie"? He feels the urgency, the need to find him, Arthur, and the fear of a darker magic, of Vivienne.

Vivienne. She's coming. He warns Merlin, "Vivienne is awake, Merlin. Have you come to take me home? Where were you?" Merlin does not respond, but Arthur knows that his friend is moving towards Avalon, towards him.

Now that Arthur is no longer trapped in the cave, he wonders how long it will take the sorceress to find him again. He can feel her searching, probing through his dreaming mind and the king is torn between the desire to flee, to hide in the cave, and to stand his ground and show Vivienne the bravery of a king of Camelot. He is reluctant to leave the light. The light is Merlin, and the one thing in this dream that Arthur knows to be true is that Merlin is the key to his awakening. It isn't long before she finds him. He stays in the soft glow of the light, and she crouches in the darkness, no more than a shadow and a nightmare. He tells Merlin, "Vivienne has found me." He knows that if she is close in his dream, she must have found where he sleeps. "Can you see me, Merlin? Please tell me you can. I feel her. She is here, at Avalon."

_I'm coming for you, Arthur. Do you feel it?_

The light glows a little brighter. "Yes, Emrys," Arthur whispers, calling Merlin by his Druid name. It's the best way he knows to show Merlin that he trusts his magic. The other man does not respond, but Arthur can feel Merlin more clearly than ever before, and Arthur shoves his desperation toward Merlin, praying that his friend can sense it. The darkness is pressing hard against the light, and Vivienne's form takes shape in it, if a shape she could be called. She is a void, an emptiness that draws misery into itself.

"Arthur," she whispers, "Your Emrys cannot protect you. He cannot reach you here."

The way Arthur remembers it, there is very little that Merlin cannot do. "You're wrong," he tells her. "He has already found me."

She laughs, if darkness can laugh, "He is a fool to trust a Pendragon. To love a Pendragon."

Arthur steps more in the light. He will not listen to her lies.

She purrs at him, the sweeping strands of inky black brushing against the light. "You did not know? Yes, your servant lied to you about many things, Son of Uther." The darkness circles him, spins him, and he feels the onslaught of Vivienne's evil intent against his mind. He cries out, falls, and reaches for Merlin. "Interesting," she hisses, "That you would reach out for him, a sorcerer, when you carry the blood of Uther Pendragon, enemy of magic. I can see it, Arthur, I can see all of what you hide in your deepest memories. What would your father say if he could see that his son, a king of Camelot, cared more for a male sorcerer than he did his own wife? Would he curse you? Condemn you the way he did me?" The darkness flicks against the light once more and then edges away.

He can feel Merlin's wariness, his trepidation; he must be near Vivienne. Arthur feels it also. He tells Merlin, "She was talking to me." He knows that isn't specific enough, that Merlin won't be able make sense of it, so he adds, "She knows things I never told anyone." There were some things Arthur had not even admitted to himself.

He wishes he knew how time passed for Merlin, how long it had been for his friend—no, he corrects himself there is no word for what Merlin is to Arthur—for every second that Arthur has been dreaming. Has it been years? Days? Minutes? The darkness presses in again, and Arthur pushes back.

Vivienne taunts him now by showing him Merlin. His former servant is dressed strangely, and Arthur feels a twinge of loss at Merlin's lack of neckerchief. He sees Merlin through her eyes, and hears her say to him, "If he knew what you were, he would strike you down himself!"

Arthur manages to shout one word—Never!—before Vivienne closes the image and Merlin is gone again.

"I will offer you a choice, Arthur Pendragon, to stay in this dream with your Emrys and never fear losing him, or to make you watch as he suffers through his death before meeting your own." The darkness shows him Merlin underneath the oak tree, Merlin as Arthur would have him stay forever. The quickest glimpse of Merlin is enough to make Arthur determined to not have it be the last. The light is Merlin, he tells himself, the light is Merlin. He stands in the middle of the light and bathes himself in it. It is Merlin, and soon he sees through Merlin's eyes. The sorcerer is facing off with Vivienne, and Merlin carries Excalibur. "You're in range," Arthur says, and he urges Merlin to swing the sword, to fell Vivienne where she stands. Merlin misses, and Arthur can do nothing but watch as the sorceress performs the blackest of magics and conjure a dragon out of herself. He watches her return to his body—is that really what he looks like when he sleeps?—and she pulls him back into the dream, into the dark.

"Do you see now, Arthur Pendragon? Do you see that your Emrys cannot defeat my magic, the true magic of the High Priestess? I carry the vengeance of my daughters, and your friend—is that what  you call him?—will not overthrow me. Not this time." Her words are black and edged like a knife in the dark.

He senses that Merlin is in danger, that the conjured dragon is not swayed by Merlin's powers. He panics and Vivienne takes the opportunity to coil around him, a snake constricting its prey. Whatever magic she has, Arthur cannot fight it, and soon the king suffocates in the never-ending black of Vivienne's soul. "It's so dark," he tells Merlin, not sure if the other man can hear him. "No way out." His voice is hardly more than a whisper, even in his own mind.

 _Hold on_ , Merlin tells him, _Just hold on. A little bit longer._

Vivienne's shape is fully formed in the dark and she chokes him with long ropes that extend from shadowed fingertips. "I have you now, King of Camelot," Vivienne says. Arthur struggles against the ropes, but she overpowers him. "A pity you could not say farewell to your precious Emrys."

He knows he cannot fight this, cannot fight her, without a sword, but though Vivienne controls most of the dream, Arthur is still the one that is asleep. This is still a dream, Arthur decides, and dreams can be changed. Altered. He dreams of Excalibur, of the feel of the hilt in his hands, of the weight of the blade. Vivienne is distracted, he can tell by the loosening of her grip. The dreamed sword in his hands, he slices the ropes and frees himself, and thrusts Excalibur into the light. He doesn't know if this will work, but as Uther once told him as a child, the only thing that can conquer darkness is light, and Merlin is light. He can't see Merlin, but he knows the sorcerer also has Excalibur in his hand. "Together, Merlin," Arthur tells him, "Swing  your sword." Excalibur, bathed in light and burning like the sun, stabs the shadowed Vivienne, and as she screams, the darkness recedes like the tide, until the sorceress is no more.

There is no darkness now, only light. And Merlin. _What do I do now?_ he asks. Arthur knows it's the real Merlin speaking. _When Kilgharrah and I altered the curse, we didn't know how to break it_.

Of course Merlin would not have thought of a solution. Greatest sorcerer in existence and he cannot break his own spell! "I don't want to dream anymore," says Arthur. He doesn't. He's dreamt long enough; he knows now that he's slept through centuries. He's dreamt of the past and now he wants to experience the future. "I'm tired of dreaming."

_I know._

Arthur steps into a familiar memory, and there is Merlin underneath the oak tree. Emrys sits next to him, and as Arthur watches they become one and the same. He takes Merlin's hand in his and pulls him so he's standing, and their faces are mere inches apart. He remembers the words that he'd wanted to tell Merlin so long ago, but he finds that he no longer needs to. Instead, he laces his fingers into Merlin's dark hair, pulls him close, and presses their lips together.

Arthur opens his eyes. He's no longer dreaming. The first thing he sees is Merlin. The other man smiles, and the king smiles with him. Arthur says, "Your ears are even bigger than I remember."


	12. Epilogue: Destiny

The city is loud, so very loud, and confusing. People dress strangely and apparently chivalry is dead. I rarely leave what Merlin calls "the flat" unless he is with me. He’s quit his job so as to “take proper care of the old man.” I call him an idiot.

“The job meant nothing anyway,” he tells me.

I wonder how long it has been since Merlin had something to really care about. When he speaks of the last thousand years, he can tell me of nothing but wars, diseases, famine.  He never speaks of friends or of lovers (I cannot help but be secretly glad of the latter) unless they were from the time of Camelot.

He tries to convince me daily that this century, which is the twenty-first apparently, is not terrifying. I tell him that some things, such as vacuum cleaners and microwaves, should never have been invented.

"The king I know was never a coward," he teases me one day when he’s managed to convince me to attend something called a “cinema" (death for amusement will _never_ be entertaining).

 _I'm not a coward_ , I tell him, but I have never liked the things I don't understand.

His eyes, they fall and lose a little of their shine, and I know he's thinking of the days when I didn't understand that magic is what makes him Merlin. But now I do. So I tease him and tell him he is still rubbish at laundry, most powerful sorcerer in existence or not. I ask him to show me what he can do, to show me him.

At first, I think he will refuse me but that night, after he cooks me food from a country that I cannot pronounce, Merlin takes me to where Camelot once stood, a proud and tall beacon of prosperity and peace. He tells me that Guinevere was a good queen, and that my people loved her the way they did me. He tells me I would have been proud.

"Of course I'm proud of her," I say to him, "I married her for a reason."

I walk through what was once my country, and I imagine things the way they were. There is nothing there now, no citadel, no banners flying the Pendragon standard. There are a few rock formations that might be ruins, but we're too far away to tell. Merlin explains that his magic has kept this place secret since the world moved on from the time of knights and dragons and sorcery. "There was never any Camelot without you," he says with a sigh.

I wonder how many times Merlin has come back here, how often he's looked at this valley, these hills, and missed Gaius, missed Gwen, missed the knights. Missed me. I wonder if he knows that Camelot could never have been without us. I remember telling him that on that horrible day long ago; I remember forcing the air from my lungs to form words as the shard of Mordred's sword pierced the edges of my heart, but now I wonder if Merlin believes it.

A thousand years of dreaming has opened my eyes to a few things, and one of them is that Merlin has absolutely no idea how important he is. To Camelot. To magic. To me. Even if it takes another thousand years, I will make sure he knows.

It's nighttime, and we lay side-by-side on a hilltop. Merlin's magic clears the clouds from the sky. The stars shine down on us, the only light for miles and miles. After a thousand years, it comforts me to know that the stars have not changed. "I never appreciated the open air like I do now," I tell Merlin.

He knows that I'm rubbish with words and that what I mean to say is, "I'm glad you found me. I'm glad to be awake. I'm glad to be here with you."

He smiles at me, instead, and with a wave of his hand, he has the stars tell our story. The legend of the "once and future king." The stars dance and speak of dragons, of great battles won, of mythical quests, and of servants who were secretly sorcerers. The stars tell us that I'm awake because Albion needs me again. I grab Merlin's hand in mine and I tell him that for me, Albion has always meant Merlin and that perhaps it's him that needs me now.

He turns his head to look at me, and when our eyes meet, I realise that I'm still trapped under that great oak tree, surrounded by Merlin's eyes and ears and smile, trapped in a moment that I never want to end. "We have a destiny, Arthur," he says. "We've always had a destiny. I have always needed you. You have always needed me. Now, Albion needs us once more."

I’ve spent a thousand years asleep, and I find that destiny can wait until the morning. I press my lips to his, and I wonder if the rest of our lives will feel like this, like that day under the oak tree.

When morning comes, the sun finds us with our legs entangled, our fingers interlaced. I can't tell which hand is mine, at first. When we stand, it is together, and when we walk it is hand-in-hand.

Merlin tells me that the world has changed, that even though sorcery is still hidden, we don't have to be. This new world is strange and loud, but I am grateful that some things have changed. I never want Merlin to have to hide again.

He also tells me that we're a popular story for children. He won't let me read these stories, though. He insists that the truth of us—our story of magic and mystery and danger and love—is so much better than any fiction.

He's right.

Someday, I may even tell him that.

 

FIN

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the other images our wonderful artist xcuri0sity made for us, and leave her some love! http://agentemrys.tumblr.com/private/92692742463/tumblr_n974fknf8V1qhquwl

**Author's Note:**

> We would like to thank our beta, Misty, for her patient and thorough read throughs of this fic. Your grammar is impeccable, darling. And to our wonderful artist, xcuri0sity: we wrote the words, but your artistic vision has given this story life beyond anything we could have done. We couldn’t have conceived a more perfect collaboration. We have loved working with you!


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